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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



Lectures on Social Questions : 

Competition, Communism, Cooperation, 
and the Relation of Christianity to So- 
cialism. 



12 MO., PAPER, 35 CENTS ; CLOTH, 75 CENTS 



THOMAS WHITTAKER 
2 and 3 Bible House, New York 



CHRISTIAN 
RATIONALISM 



ESSAYS ON MATTERS IN DEBATE 

BETWEEN 

FAITH AND UNBELIEF. 



.x> 



BY J. H. RYLANCE, D. D. 



PUBLISHED AT THE BIBLE HOUSE, NEW 
YORK, BY THOMAS WHITTAKER, J898. 



■T1 



Copyright, 1898, 
By Thomas Whittaker 



fy Transfer 

D. C, Public Library 

0EC 2» 1938 



* TKTW. 









« V RECEIVED, ~ 

NOV29IJ02 

^/JVGTON, ^ 



"Reason is the only Faculty we have where- 
with to judge of anything, even Revelation 
itself."— Butler. 



(3) 



CONTENTS 



Page 
ESSAY I. 

On Free Thought 7 

ESSAY II. 
On Keason and Faith 37 

ESSAY III. 
On Inspiration and Infallibility 69 

ESSAY IV. 
On the Racking Doubt 107 

ESSAY V. 
On Existing Dissensions Between Science and 
Religion 143 

ESSAY VI. 
An Historic Foothold for Faith 187 



(5) 



I. 

01ST FEEE THOUGHT. 



It might prove instructive, if one cared to 
go into the question, to ascertain how free 
thought ever came to be identified with infidel 
thought, or a freethinker with a disbeliever 
in the doctrines of Christianity. So it is, how- 
ever, as we all well know, to the very serious 
prejudice of Christ's religion; the appropria- 
tion of the title of " Freethinkers " by the men 
who deny the Gospel of Jesus seeming to 
imply, that those who accept it do so on terms 
which will not bear the application of free 
thought ; or, if Christian believers may be 
credited with thinking at all, then are they to 
be counted slavish thinkers ; or held to be un- 
der bonds to some authority which discounte- 
nances thinking. 

Some such assumption as that may be de- 
tected in the men who jingle the phrases Free 
Thought, Free Thinker, Free Eeligion, in our 
ears to-day ; with hinted scorn of those who 
are thus supposed to have a dread of all mental 
7 



8 ON FREE THOUGHT. 

freedom, as affecting the interests of Chris- 
tianity. Talk and insinuation of such purport 
circulate very freely about us; specially in 
circles of sceptics of a certain intellectual 
grade ; the insults so offered to men of posi- 
tive Christian convictions being less notice- 
able than the childish egotism of the men who 
so talk. The phrase "Free Thought" has 
come to have a touch of cant about it, indeed, 
very distasteful to men of discreet minds, 
whether Christian or infidel. There is a tone 
in the common use of it, which arrogates for 
all freethinkers a superior order of intellectual 
power. Free thinking is to supply the solvent 
for every problem that perplexes us, and to 
set the whole world right on all questions that 
trouble it ; the subjects of these anticipations 
forgetting the fact, that the ultimate value of 
thought of any sort, is to be estimated, not by 
the quality or the circumstance of its freedom, 
so much, but by its clearness, and its sound- 
ness, and its logical consistency. For freedom 
is simply the space, so to speak, in which 
thought operates. What thought can do, in 
the widest sphere of activity conceded to it, is 
the question. It may be narrow, with the 
largest possible room round it; or frivolous, 
conceited, blind. Or it may be ill-balanced, 
vapory, and run to riot. Freedom is only a 



ON FREE THOUGHT. 9 

condition, in other words, either of thought or 
of action. How will a man use his freedom, is 
the question. For the freedom itself supplies 
no sure guarantee that the thinking will be 
worth anything, how free soever it may be. 
There may be just as thorough a spirit of 
bigotry, indeed, in the man who boasts that he 
is a freethinker, as in the man who looks upon 
all free thought with a devout horror. 

Yet must it not be inferred from this that it 
is ever just or expedient to repress by force 
the utterance of opinion or conviction in a 
community, as long as vital interests are not 
seriously threatened. "We must accept free- 
dom of thought with all the extravagances it 
may lead to, as long as it does not violently in- 
terfere with thinkings that the freethinker 
might not call free. Mr. Mill, in his admir- 
able little book on " Liberty," made out a very 
good case in behalf of freedom of opinion, 
and of debate. The truth therein contended 
for did not need, however, the pains which the 
philosopher bestowed in its defence ; the lib- 
erty he so cogently contended for having been 
very generally conceded by the governments 
of all free countries, even in his own time. 
All intelligent and open-minded men are sub- 
stantially agreed to-day, that religious and so- 
cial doctrines and institutions must be main- 



10 01ST FREE THOUGHT. 

tained by other means than a blind force, if 
they are to be maintained at all. Rulers both 
of Churches and of States ought to have 
learned that by this time. For whenever force 
has been applied to curtail the free action and 
circulation of opinion, the policy, in all free 
countries, at least, has not only failed, in the 
long run, but has secretly fostered the evil it 
was intended to destroy ; by begetting resent- 
ments and a general sense of injustice in men's 
minds. While men remain in a state of intel- 
lectual childhood a policy of coercion may 
seem to succeed ; the imposing of an implicit 
subjection being a comparatively easy task in 
the case of children, but it is of ttimes hard in 
the case of grown men. A paternal govern- 
ment has always seemed to be the best for all 
concerned, as long as subjects have been con- 
tent with their swaddling clothes ; but a time 
comes, in the development of nations as of in- 
dividual men, when the garments of the child 
are found not to fit the stalwart limbs of the 
man. And then there is apt to be some rend- 
ing done, if the swaddling clothes are not 
quietly laid aside in time. There was a very 
violent rending of such raiment in Europe to- 
ward the close of the last century ; the imme- 
diate results being most marked in a nation in 
which there had been working for some time 



ON FEEE THOUGHT. 11 

a strong and an acute intelligence. For long 
the rulers had gone on ruling " by the grace of 
God," as they said; and fearfully dark and 
cruel things had been done under the assumed 
sanction ; till the people, or the more enlight- 
ened among them, became sceptical of the 
high claim, and a reaction set in. For a time 
it was repressed : then compromise was tried : 
but the weight of waters steadily gathered 
behind the embankments of authority, till they 
yielded ; and the floods went thundering down 
pleasant valleys, and across fertile plains, till 
the very globe seemed to shake to its centre. 
One of the rulers had said — "After me the 
deluge " ; and the deluge had come. Or, in a 
figure more familiar, possibly, to some of my 
readers, the civil and ecclesiastical engineers 
of those times, had for long sat smiling upon 
the safety-valve of the State machine ; till the 
pent-up power beneath blew them and the 
machine into the air! Developed powers in 
peoples must have larger room provided for 
their safe working; one great need in those 
who guide the energies of a nation, political, 
social, or religious, being a quickness of dis- 
cernment 

"When to take 
Occasion by the hand, and make 
The bounds of freedom wider yet." 



12 ON FREE THOUGHT. 

Those bounds do not admit of very much 
widening for the people of these United States 
in the political sphere ; the largest possible 
liberty being guaranteed to all citizens by the 
fundamental provisions of the instrument 
which makes us a Commonwealth. But lib- 
erty of thought is still dreaded by multitudes 
among us, as somehow perilous to faith and 
piety ; all kinds of pleas and prophecies being 
heard, specially from our schools of theol- 
ogy, to bring it into discredit. While in 
lands where the Church retains anything of 
her old tyrannous power, stronger measures 
are still sometimes directed against heretical 
opinion. The folly of such attempts should be 
obvious, however, if only from the fact that 
thinking is just that one prerogative of man 
which cannot be controlled by force. State- 
craft, or priestcraft, may bind and bend the 
body into all sorts of subservient attitudes ; by 
loading it with chains, or by putting it under 
the grim and grinding rack — for our frail 
humanity shrinks from pain — but we cannot 
touch the mind by such clumsy devices. You 
may make cowards, slaves, hypocrites, by 
penal coercion; but you cannot beget a sin- 
gle sentiment or conviction in the reason or 
in the conscience of men by either threat or 
penalty. It is not only cruel, therefore, but 



ON FEEE THOUGHT. 13 

it is silly to resort to such methods of manip- 
ulating men's minds ; while as to practical con- 
sequences I venture to affirm, that the evils 
traceable to free thinking are a thousand- 
fold less hurtful to Keligion, than the evils 
that have sprung from blindly attempting to 
repress free thinking. 

Ecclesiastical rulers have assured us again 
and again, very solemnly, that if men should 
be suffered to do their own thinking with- 
out dictation or restraint, the world would 
soon be deluged with a licentious infidelity. 
But Ecclesiasticism likes to frighten people, 
for its own ends. Let the prediction be brought 
to the test of fact — for coercion has had ample 
scope to exhibit its virtues — and all the foolish 
fears which orthodoxy inspires into timid souls, 
touching this question as so many others, will 
vanish. What have been the fruits of coercion 
in Italy, in France, in Spain, or wherever the 
tyranny of power has tried to repress free in- 
quiry ? Is Christian faith firmer in those coun- 
tries to-day than in parts of Christendom where 
the claims of private judgment have been re- 
spected? Is there more of religious rever- 
ence, of devoutness, or of obedience to Divine 
Commandments there than elsewhere? Is 
the Bible more revered from men having 
been forbidden to read it ? Or is the Church 



14 ON FREE THOUGHT. 

stronger there in popular favor and affection, 
from men having been compelled to accept 
its mandates in dumb submission? Let the 
terribly irreligious condition of vast sections 
of continental Europe answer ; with their pop- 
ulations utterly alienated from the Church ; 
many being filled with a deep detestation of 
the very name of religion. "Which desperate 
condition of things is largely traceable to the 
policy which has tried to stifle all inquiry, out- 
side of the very narrow limits allowed by the 
Church; to a policy which has denied men 
light lest they should see, and denied them 
knowledge lest they should know ; and which 
now has the audacity to impute the evils it 
originated, to the power that has at length risen 
up in protest against its tyranny and deceit ! 

Nor need we marvel if men, moved by 
a passionate hate of unreality and imposture, 
have rushed to the wildest extremes of opin- 
ion and feeling as to all things taught in the 
name of Keligion. When those who have 
long lived in darkness are suddenly brought 
into light, the eye is bewildered, and the brain 
sometimes dizzy, for a while. Or when the 
limb that has long worn a shackle is released 
from the coil, the nerves are unsteady till 
strengthened by use. But there is surely oc- 
casion of good hope, for those who believe 



ON EEEE THOUGHT. 15 

both in Christ's religion and in mental free- 
dom, in the fact, that where the latter is to- 
day allowed the widest range, the former has 
its firmest foundation. 

I have myself, therefore, no sympathy with 
those who would lay any unfair restraint upon 
the free play of thought in our time ; or with 
those who apply opprobrious epithets to men 
calling themselves " freethinkers " ; or with 
the priests or preachers who tell us of a fiery 
and everlasting vengeance, awaiting all who 
doubt the generally accepted creeds of their 
churches. If such weapons were ever of any 
really good service in the maintenance of 
Christian Faith, they are worse than useless 
to-day. The rapid spreading of intelligence ; 
the progress of democratic doctrines and insti- 
tutions in all enlightened States ; the sense of 
self-ownership, so to speak, that has every- 
where taken possession of men's minds, and 
of rights which they deem their due, and of 
responsibilities in others toward them ; — these 
advances are rapidly rendering the task of 
authority to maintain its old imperious atti- 
tudes hopeless. Statesmen, of the old con- 
servative order ; priests, who look upon them- 
selves as set to insist upon ancient decrees 
Avithout abatement or qualification ; " privi- 
leged classes," who have hitherto had such a 



16 ON FKEE THOUGHT. 

pleasant time of it in the many being willing 
to serve them in almost dumb subjection ; — all 
these begin to look round them in fear, upon 
the independent tone and bearing of the eman- 
cipated throng ; wondering why men cannot 
be content with the old " divinely ordered " 
condition of things, and with the methods 
which once worked so smoothly, seemingly, in 
the management of the world's affairs. Even 
so. One is almost moved to pity, at sight of 
men so bewildered 'mid the altered relations 
and commotion of our age ; yet are the igno- 
rance and cowardice of such men really worthy 
of scorn. For such commotion was sure to 
ensue " in the process of the suns " ; and the 
worst is not yet, probably. "Were it not fit- 
ting to say, that men in positions of influence 
would more worthily occupy themselves in ed- 
ucating and guiding the energies newly let 
loose in society, than in foolishly trying to re- 
press them ? or in speaking evil of them ? Yet 
is this the temper and disposition of many of 
our fellow citizens of character and culture ; 
apprehending, as they do, serious evils to reli- 
gion from the intellectual ferment of the time. 
The battle is between Authority, with all its 
prestige and all its venerable sanctions, on the 
one hand, and what is called Individualism 
on the other ; this " bete noire " of Individual- 



ON FREE THOUGHT. 17 

ism being an ignorant, lawless, and desperately 
revolutionary creature, as depicted by those who 
dread it. Yet is it simply the right which a 
man claims to do his own thinking, and to 
draw his own conclusions, and to follow think- 
ings and conclusions out in life, so long as he 
does not hurtfully intrude upon the thinkings 
and conclusions of his neighbor in so doing. 
But what exposures and denunciations of Indi- 
vidualism we hear from pulpits, and get 
through " the religious press " ; an American 
prelate having lately leveled a book at the 
creature, in which he professes to "strike at 
its core." But who or what is it that con- 
demns Individualism but Individualism? — as 
represented by some priest, or preacher, or 
professor of divinity. Or the condemnation 
comes from a collection of individualisms, as 
seen in some conference, or synod, or council. 
But though it may be sometimes true that " in 
a multitude of counsellors there is wisdom," 
yet a multitude of fallibilities can never yield 
us ^fallibility. 

But I may be reminded that priestly In- 
dividualism, representing the historic Chris- 
tian Church, rests back upon a vast, consoli- 
dated, and trustworthy Authority; before 
which all right-minded men might reason- 
ably be expected to stand reverently silent. 



18 ON FREE THOUGHT. 

Well ; I do not myself deny the existence of 
such an historical " deposit," upon which Faith 
may draw to some extent ; but I do deny that 
inquiry can be logically so precluded. For 
what is Authority, even of the very highest 
order known to us, but the gathered up and 
formulated opinions, testimonies, judgments — 
all duly endorsed, let us say — of individual 
men f — of martyrs, saints, apostles, prophets ? 
such opinions, testimonies, judgments, gather- 
ing not only bulk, but moral weight, as the 
fears and respect and reverence of men gath- 
ered round them, in the course of the centuries. 
Let us even say, that the first witnesses to 
truths now enjoined as authoritative, were un- 
impeachable witnesses ; yet must a man some- 
how decide for himself to-day, that their testi- 
mony, as delivered to us, is genuine, and ade- 
quate for the purpose, or purposes, for which 
it is cited. And thus we get Individualism 
again ; in the necessary work of authenticat- 
ing the evidence on which Authority rests its 
claims ; the only plea that can be preferred in 
favor of the maintenance of the old docile sub- 
missiveness amounting to this, that men and 
women are to yield to Authority in settlement 
of all disputes affecting Eeligion because its ut- 
terances are authoritative I an argument which 
were as good for the Koran as it is for the 



OK FREE THOUGHT. 19 

Bible ; or for Buddhism as it is for Christian- 
ity. But more, along this line of caveat. 
Granted that the authority alleged as good 
ground for faith to-day, was sufficient and ir- 
refutable at the first ; yet will it be conceded 
by all men of intelligence and candor, that in 
the vast, miscellaneous mass of doctrines and 
dogmas and conceits commonly enjoined by 
Authority in this age, there are many things 
of human invention, and some purely ficti- 
tious ; while others have had an exaggerated 
importance attached to them ; all such admix- 
tures and perversions requiring discrimination 
in those who would have the truth free from 
error ; which sifting process involves the exer- 
cise of the dreaded Free Thought, or the as- 
sertion of the detested Individualism. 

But why should it be assumed that Individ- 
ualism is necessarily the unruly and destructive 
power it is represented to be, by those who 
seemingly stand in terror of it ? It may 
safely be contended, on the contrary, I think, 
that there are few men, except the light-minded 
and self -conceited, — and with such men we 
have nothing to do in this discussion, — who 
are not willing to show a proper deference to 
Authority, when of a kind to inspire an intel- 
ligent respect ; aye, even to Authority in the 
shape of a tolerably well-founded tradition, 



20 ON FREE THOUGHT. 

in any sphere of thought or investigation 
where tradition can claim to be considered at 
all. Let it come to this, then, that men shall 
be suffered to think freely, and freely to as- 
sert the conclusions they may reach touching 
Religion ; the necessary consequence would not 
be intellectual anarchy, much less the destruc- 
tion of all faith in the foundation facts and 
doctrines of Christ's Gospel; but simply a 
larger variety of opinion, perhaps, about mat- 
ters which could not command evidence suffi- 
cient to beget definiteness of conviction. As 
to all essential things enjoined or taught by 
Jesus and His Apostles, however, faith would 
be stronger and more influential, because in- 
telligent and free. Take away all dictatorial 
authority affecting religious beliefs, and all the 
evidence upon which those beliefs profess to 
rest would remain to us ; begetting conviction 
in all men capable of appreciating the evi- 
dence ; and leading to a general convergence 
of opinions and feelings sufficient to satisfy all 
reasonable requirements as to a " Unity of the 
Faith." But why do I speak hypothetically ? 
It is thus that all intelligent belief knits itself 
together and gathers into a body even now ; 
Authority having very much less to do with 
the matter than those men think who dwell 
on its virtues so appealingly. It might allay 



ON FREE THOUGHT. 21 

the fears of such men, somewhat, would they 
only recollect, that there are conservative in- 
stincts in human nature, which will always 
secure a prevailing respect for truths, and for 
institutions, and for customs, that have the 
attributes of reasonableness and wholesome- 
ness visibly in them ; while there will always 
remain moral authority, springing out of the 
very nature of the truths which Christianity 
proclaims, fortified by their necessary influence 
in and over individual men and society at 
large, sufficient to make itself a governing 
power in the world. 

"VYhat we really have occasion to fear in the 
present unsettled condition of the public mind 
touching matters of a religious nature, is such 
a preaching and teaching of Authority as may 
spread the suspicion abroad that the faith of 
the Christian world rests on nothing deeper 
than Authority ; or, that at the touch of Free' 
Thought all the creeds of Christendom would 
melt into mist. Conceits of such sort are al- 
ready harbored, indeed, by multitudes of our 
fellows; owing, very largely, to the foolish 
fears exhibited by our orthodox Scribes as to 
the ravages threatened by Free Thinking — 
these teachers thereby abjuring all title to be 
considered freethinkers themselves. Whereas 
their own faith, and their very trust in Author- 



22 OK FREE THOUGHT. 

ity, would be found, upon the issue of a 
thorough analysis of such faith and trust, to 
have no better guarantees of validity than 
those that can be made good by free thinking ; 
and which the most fervent believer in Au- 
thority must be supposed to have actually so 
made good, to escape the scorn of discerning 
men. 

There is really nothing left for us, then, 
constituted and conditioned as we are, — let 
men lament it as they may — but to seek, mid 
all the embarrassments of this probationary 
state, to know the mind and will of the Great 
God toward us ; whether written in books, or 
on rocks, or in the constitution and intuitions 
of the human soul; and the sooner our reli- 
gious guides begin to suffer such seeking to go 
on without hindrance, and without objection, 
the better will it be for the cause which they 
represent. ~No man can dictate to me what 
I shall hold as essential to acceptance with 
God, till he has submitted his credentials in 
proof of his right to dictate ; investigation 
into the reliability and sufficiency of which 
supposes, of course, the concession of all the 
rights claimed by Freethinkers. 

But a difficulty emerges here ; or rather, a 
difficulty must now have attention that has 
been pressing for notice for some distance back 



OK FREE THOUGHT. 23 

in this discussion, as the reader has no doubt 
felt; which difficulty may be best indicated, 
perhaps, by a question as from the lips of a 
free-thinking friend. " How are you going to 
reconcile the claims of free thought, which you 
seem to concede," such an one might say to me, 
" with the predetermination of the conclusions 
which the Freethinker must reach to be ac- 
ceptable to God, as you Christians talk? It 
seems to me, and to those who hold with me," 
our free-thinking friend might go on to say, 
" that you liberal Christians are ' playing fast 
and loose ' with us. On the one hand, you al- 
low that a man has the right to the free use of 
his intellectual faculties in religious questions ; 
but on the other, you lay down beforehand 
the results which the inquirer must reach, to 
escape the ' eternal death ' you have in store 
for him, should he reach other conclusions than 
those you prescribe, or that your religion pre- 
scribes. But that, it seems to us, is a conces- 
sion with a very illogical stipulation attached 
to it." Now, the exception is fairly taken and 
stated, it must be allowed ; and is deserving of 
as fair and frank an answer. It is an excep- 
tion that has been an occasion of much mental 
perplexity, I suspect, in men who, while re- 
taining devout respect for prescribed truth, ac- 
knowledge the rights of free Inquiry. How 



24 OK FREE THOUGHT. 

can these seemingly conflicting attitudes of 
mind be reconciled ? 

Well ; it must be assumed, in the first place, 
and the assumption must be steadily borne in 
mind, that the Free Thought which we are to 
suppose to be bent upon finding out the truth 
or the untruth of the essential things in Chris- 
tianity, is of a sober, intelligent, and — may I 
not stipulate? — reverent caste and character. 
That preliminary being conceded, as being re- 
quired by the nature of the problem to be 
solved, it will be further allowed, I am sure, 
that the quest after the truth belief of which 
Christianity insists upon shall be thorough, be- 
fore a man can be suffered to settle down in 
unbelief unblamed. Then, — and to this con- 
dition the most resolute Freethinker will bring 
no objection, I take it — that the process of truth- 
seeking shall be conducted with a vigilant 
fidelity ; with the mind of the inquirer open 
to every ray of light, come whencesoever it 
may ; and with the heart free from all pervert- 
ing impurities, and possessed of the requisite 
moral susceptibilities for truth of the kind now 
in question to make its proper impression upon 
the nature. For the heart, as most men of a 
ripened discernment have learned, has a great 
deal to do in rendering moral investigations 
successful. Then one other condition will be 



ON FREE THOUGHT. 2o 

granted me, I have no doubt, viz : that the life 
of the inquirer shall be one of practical sub- 
mission to the great laws of Christian duty, 
while the inquiry is going on ; according to an 
authority which the Freethinker may not 
count divine, but which, in this case, asserts 
a principle of profound importance in ethical 
science : the principle expressed in the words 
— "If any man will do His will, (God's will), 
he shall know of the doctrine that it is of God." 
Now, holding that I have made no unfair 
demand in this preliminary statement of terms, 
I may here ask — where is the man who has 
conscientiously and thoroughly complied with 
these terms, and yet remains in a state of set- 
tled unbelief ? I do not know the man ; 
though I have had a good deal to do with un- 
believers, of every grade, and of every shade 
of opinion. Somewhere there has been inat- 
tention, neglect, or possibly graver shortcom- 
ings, on the part of the man who has missed 
his way in the process of truth-seeking ; or he 
had surely come upon evidence enough to give 
him pause, at least, in his denial of the testi- 
mony of Jesus. It will be answered, I know, 
that this, in effect, is the old imputation upon 
the honesty of the unbeliever. I am too dis- 
criminating, while I know too much of the 
pain and trouble that some men have endured 



26 OK FBEE THOUGHT. 

in quest of rest for their doubts, to put the 
conclusion in that bald way. But I am com- 
pelled, as a Christian, and as a man, to attrib- 
ute the failure to find ground for faith in the 
New Testament revelation of Love and Eight- 
eousness, not to the fact that such ground is 
wholly wanting, but to the inquirer's having 
failed, somewhere, to comply with conditions 
upon which faith is suspended, in the economy 
witnessed to in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
Most assuredly may it be said, that of those 
who deny the essential facts and doctrines of 
Christianity, few can be found whose denial 
is traceable to searching thought of any sort. 
The many err through moral indolence, or 
from lack of intellectual seriousness ; through 
hasty assumptions, or a captious conceit ; or 
from foolishly imputing the foibles and faults 
of so-called Christians to the religion which 
condemns those faults ! To build conclusions 
affecting such weighty interests upon such 
flimsy foundations, however, is surely un- 
worthy of a man who calls himself a free 
thinker. Thought with such an one, I should 
rather say, is narrow, crooked, self-willed, 
and therefore blind. And upon such a state 
of mind, God Almighty were impotent to pro- 
duce the conviction of faith. 

But much of this is beside the mark, as a 



ON FREE THOUGHT. 27 

contribution toward the confutation of the 
contentions of Infidelity. What is needed is, 
that the two parties to the debate, the Free- 
thinker and the Christian Apologist, should 
somehow get at a better understanding of each 
other's position, and of each other's claims; 
or of the real question, or questions, they are 
supposed to be discussing. 

Specially should the Freethinker be given to 
know, through fair and explicit presentations 
of the truth, that it is not faith in all the theo- 
ries, speculations, far-fetched deductions, of our 
schools of theology, or in matters in any way 
necessarily doubtful, that Christianity insists 
upon ; but upon faith in the vital and vitalizing 
facts and doctrines of Christ's Gospel, which are 
few ; which distinction glances at an occasion 
of a vast amount of unbelief just now prevalent. 
For there are many things in our theologies 
and in our ecclesiasticisms which bewilder and ' 
vex men of an independent temper ; they in 
their heat and haste dismissing all religious 
claims as unworthy of serious regard ; the 
representatives of Eeligion having given the 
world to understand, that all the legendary 
incredibilities of early Jewish writings, with 
their sanctions of atrocities at which we shud- 
der, and with all the groundless decrees of 
Church councils since Christ came ; — all these 



28 01ST FREE THOUGHT. 

are to be received without question, and ap- 
proved without scruple, say our priests and 
preachers, before men or women may presume 
to call themselves Christians ! 

No marvel that Infidelity is rife. It is the 
old story, which the records of human experi- 
ence tell so distressingly ; but the Scribes, as 
of old, refuse to learn. The Church has made 
infidels by the hundred, and then has consigned 
them to the unquenchable fires for being infi- 
dels ! The superstitions and impostures of the 
Romish Church of the time, and of anterior 
times, were chiefly responsible for the infidelity 
of M. De Yoltaire. It was these which armed 
the keen-witted man with those shafts of criti- 
cism and of scorn, which he fired with such 
telling effect into the system which priestcraft 
had built up and administered in that age. 
While Protestant preachers have been doing 
the same thing, in their own way, for genera- 
tions, as they are doing to-day. They tell the 
Freethinker, that every syllable in the Bible is 
" inspired," and equally inspired ; and there- 
fore of divine, and unvarying, and everlasting 
authority. Which is taken to mean, which is 
commonly intended to mean, that every utter- 
ance which we find recorded within the bind- 
ings of the Sacred Book, and every transac- 
tion going to make up its history, and every 



ON FEEE THOUGHT. 29 

precept and sentiment of the many and very 
variegated speakers and writers represented in 
the Yolume, — that all these are divinely true, 
and of unchanging obligation. 

Nor is there to be any discrimination in the 
valuing of the statements or precepts : no ask- 
ing from whom they came, or when they were 
spoken, or for what particular purpose : no seek- 
ing to learn, for instance, whether any of them 
have become obsolete for Christians, in whole, 
or in part. Neither is there to be any discrimi- 
nation in judging of their applicability to life as 
we know it to-clay. JSTo : we have simply to open 
the Bible, and to take whatever we find there, 
and esteem it divine. And the Freethinker 
takes the preacher at his word ; and goes and 
makes his selections— -for uses of a kind which 
the preacher did not contemplate. He gathers 
out of the Yolume the story of the apple and 
the serpent / with that of the woman turned 
into a pillar of salt ; with the account of the 
wholesale slaughter of the Canaanites, and of 
the treacherous murder of Sisera ; never for- 
getting the legend of Jonah and the whale ; 
citing with relish the maledictions of angry 
Psalmists, and their invocations of unutterable 
calamities upon their enemies ; all which " ele- 
gant extracts," with a hundred others of like 
tone and character, the Freethinker takes and 



30 ON FKEE THOUGHT. 

flings abroad upon uproarious audiences in 
our Theatres and Lecture Halls ; holding out 
the Bible at arm's length, and crying — 
" There's your Book of God ! " 

It is all very sad; but the most afflicting 
thing in or about the whole business is, that 
Christian Teachers have, in effect, put these 
ugly weapons into the hands of their adver- 
saries ; by telling them, or by suffering them to 
assume, that Christianity requires its disciples 
to believe, and to approve, all the incredible 
and atrocious things of which we read in cer- 
tain fragments of early Human History ; and 
this spite of the vehement protest of Jesus, 
repeated again and again, — "Ye have heard 
that it was said by the ancients, (zoi$ ap%a.ioi<s) 
. . . thou shalt hate thine enemy. But / 
say unto you, Love your enemies I " Is it not 
about time that these mischievous stupidities 
on the part of our religious Teachers had an 
end? 

But if something is due to the Freethinker 
toward the attainment of a better under- 
standing between himself and the worthier 
order of Christian Apologists in these debates, 
very much is also due from him to his adver- 
saries. He should somehow become aware of 
the very considerable fact, and should some- 
how come to an easy practical acknowledgment 



ON FEEE THOUGHT. 31 

of it, that the high and serious concerns he con- 
tends about are not to be settled by an em- 
bittered impetuous judgment ; nor are they to 
be estimated, he ought to learn, according to 
what weak, or fanatical, or blindly dogmatic 
men may say about them. 

Freethinkers must become discriminating in 
their judgments of the men they oppose, and of 
the doctrines they would destroy, and of the 
principles they would uproot : must cease from 
the vulgar blatant abuse now so common among 
them: must exchange declamation for argu- 
ment, and an iconoclastic fury for something of 
the critical spirit ; showing so much of moral 
sensibility toward interests at stake in the con- 
troversy between Faith and Unbelief, as may 
save them from the contempt due to all intel- 
lectual recklessness, and to all light-minded- 
ness, in such grave debates. The religious 
world will continue to supply food for scoffing ; 
but the scoffer is a type of man of which an 
age boasting its advancement can have but 
little need, or can consistently show much re- 
spect for. It is not enough for a man to come 
to us with large and noisy professions of Free 
Thought, when one sees at a glance that the 
man's thoughts are not worth a sou whether 
they be " bond or free." Much less may a 
man be suffered to go about, without rebuke, 



32 ON FREE THOUGHT. 

dealing out slanderous imputations against 
men of an unimpeachable uprightness, simply 
because they refuse to give up their faith in 
God. Yet has this temper been long domi- 
nant in all ranks of the Free-thinking world ; 
even a man of the calibre of the late Mr. 
Froude having so far forgotten himself as to 
say, in a " fling " which he launched at the re- 
ligious teachers of his time, that he would 
"like to know what those of the clergy 
thought" — on questions at issue between 
Faith and Infidelity, — "whose love of truth 
was unconnected with their prospects in life : " 
an insinuation which was simply base; and 
this from the Apologist of Henry VIII. ! For 
my own part, I am free to say, from no mor- 
bid fear or passionate dislike of Free Thought, 
that I would rather betake myself to the little 
dark box of a Eomish confessor to learn 
what Truth touching Eeligion is, than to the 
general run of our Freethinkers as they gather 
in noisy circles, or as they deal out their vio- 
lent utterances through the Press. 1 While I 

J See for representative specimens, M. Monteil's " Cate- 
cJiisme du Libre Penseur," passim : a book based upon the 
bold declaration of M. Gustave Flourens : — " Our enemy is 
God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom. If a 
man would make true progress, it must be upon the basis 
of Atheism." 

The Free Thought of England and America, is of a some- 
what more reserved order. 



ON FKEE THOUGHT. 33 

would rather accept the Yatican " Syllabus " 
as the utterance of the highest attainable wis- 
dom, than the rash and irrational criticism 
which arrogates the title of "advanced 
thought" to-day. 

But we are not shut up to either of these 
alternatives, surely. Let not Christian men, 
from any insensate dread of Free Thinking, or 
by any indiscretion of act or of utterance, 
favor the assumption that we are. Free think- 
ing is not necessarily lawless Ihinkmg. There 
is even a place fo^^wMty in mensuration 
and direction of^pnioiP'SSlSS^uct ; though 
it will never again sWi^\fa9bA'3iM6ds as oiace 
it did. Luthek\jit^e dreamed what aix3in^uly 
spirit he was uncai^^^'T^teTrtob^p^to as- 
sert the rights of '^rrvl^~ Judgment." The 
ecclesiastical thongs by which he and his co- 
workers sought to restrain private judgment 
within the bounds of a reasonable liberty, 
proved as ineffectual as the withes round the 
limbs of Samson did. The authority of the 
Bible turned out to be worth no more, in ar- 
rest of free inquiry, than the authority of the 
Church, for which it had been substituted, had 
proved. All which applies more forcibly to 
men to-day, and to social conditions now ex- 
isting, than they did to the men and the con- 
ditions of the age of Luther. What then? 



34 ON FREE THOUGHT. 

Are we out at sea without rudder to our craft, 
and without chart to guide us on our "dim 
and perilous way " ? No : our plight is not as 
bad as that. Both Bible and Church may still 
render us good service in our quest after peace- 
giving Truth, and in the regulation of life's ac- 
tivities, if, while neither despising them, nor 
blindly revering them, we treat them with an 
intelligent respect ; according to the light they 
shed on our pathway through the world, and 
according to the inspiration they may supply 
to our better moods of mind; we showing 
grateful regard, also, to all other lights that 
glimmer in the moral welkin; never forget- 
ting the something within us that makes for 
righteousness. By a tolerably faithful fol- 
lowing of these, — Bible, Church, Reason, In- 
tuition, Moral Instinct, with the sweet solici- 
tations of Nature, — we shall find the path open 
before us that leads through the strait gate 
into the city of God. 

" Utterly impracticable and very dangerous 
latitudinarianism," some of my readers may 
exclaim; following the exclamation with an 
expostulation : " Of what use is such loose 
counsel for the ignorant masses of people 
about us to-day ? " Well ; as for them I have 
not very much fear; but I have a real con- 
cern for men and women who have enough of 



ON FREE THOUGHT. 35 

education to enable them to see difficulties in 
or about Keligion, but not enough to enable 
them to see through them. But say that the 
many will always need the nursery treatment 
of Authority ; yet is it daily becoming more 
and more evident, that for increasing numbers 
of men and women another sort of treatment 
is required in our time ; to whom Christianity 
must be presented as a reasonable service 
before they will surrender themselves to its 
control. Let us, at least, have done with pa- 
thetic regrets that the good old days of an 
easy credulity are no more ; and let us adjust 
ourselves and our apologetics to the facts of 
this closing Nineteenth Century. "Above all " 
— in the robust language of an English Free- 
thinker, 1 — "let us dream no dreams, and tell 
no lies ; but go our way, wherever it may lead, 
with our eyes open, and our heads erect ; with 
no sophistry in our mouths, and no masks on 
our faces " ; assured that the Great God will 
suffer no soul to fail of life hereafter, that has 
thus sought to know and to do His will. 

Barnes Fitzjames Stephen, Q. C, in "Liberty, Equality, 
and Fraternity >" p. 334, Amer. Ed. 



II. 

ON KEASON AND FAITH. 



37 



II. 

ON REASON AND FAITH. 



Ok, on Eeason versus Faith, I should rather 
say, with a heavy emphasis on the versus, were 
I one of those who hold that the two are 
necessarily and essentially at enmity with each 
other. But as I am not, and as one chief 
purpose in my inditing this Essay is to show 
their friendliness and mutual helpfulness, I 
retain the simple conjunction. 

Religiously orthodox writers show a marked 
partiality for Faith, very generally ; asserting, 
or assuming, that it is, at least, superior to 
Eeason, if not having sole right to be heard in 
the discussion of religious questions. An old 
English writer l asserts this claim to superiority 
somewhat strikingly. "Reason and Faith," 
says he, " resemble the two sons of the patri- 
arch. Reason is the firstborn, but Faith in- 
herits the blessing." Quaintly put, after the 
manner of the time, but betraying a purely 

1 Nathaniel Culverwell, dr. 1650, in his " Light of 
Nature. ' ' 

See a paper by Professor Henry Rogers, in the "Edin- 
burgh Review " for Oct. 1849. 

39 



40 ON EEASON AND FAITH. 

artificial conception of the relations which 
Keason and Faith sustain to each other in the 
moral economy of life ; Faith having no such 
preeminence over Eeason as that which the 
writer alleges ; while no such arbitrary parti- 
ality is shown toward it by the Divine Euler 
as seems to be implied in the pithy comparison 
of the old Puritan. Neither Eeason nor Faith 
inherits any blessedness which properly be- 
longs to the other. "When a man has come to 
perceive that clearly ; Eeason and Faith being 
looked upon as organic powers in the con- 
stitution of human nature ; each sustaining its 
own office, and doing its own work, in the 
moral education and direction of men ; he is so 
far prepared to judge whatever claims may be 
preferred in behalf of Eeason or of Faith in- 
telligently, and impartially. 

But few of those who take an active interest 
in these questions possess this qualification. 
They are partisans of this cause, or of that : 
champions of Eeason, or defenders of Faith ; 
the just claims of each often suffering in the 
strife. On the one hand we have the Chris- 
tian apologist, of the orthodox type ; who, in 
asserting the claims of Faith, commonly starts 
with assumptions which require to be estab- 
lished by Eeason, before they can be admitted 
as grounds for inferences of the weight and 



ON KEASON AND FAITH. 41 

width that apologists very generally proceed 
to draw from them. Claiming to be privi- 
leged with special light, however, or relying 
on an authority to which Reason is bound to 
submit, as he holds, the Biblical theologian re- 
fuses to have his postulates controverted. 
The more fanatical of these defenders of the 
Faith go to great lengths in such direction, at 
times ; being guilty of gross offences against 
sound sense; speaking profanely of some of 
God's best gifts to men. " Human nature is 
carnal ; man's judgment is perverted ; his 
affections are depraved ; no trust is to be re- 
posed in any of the faculties or intuitions of 
his nature " — that is the style of talk to which 
we are commonly treated by "evangelical" 
theologians. The best endeavors of men to 
know the truth, or to do the right, are there- 
fore to be looked upon with suspicion ; a more 
reliable guide than Reason being lifted to 
supremacy by these zealots, in all religious in- 
vestigations and debates. This guide is Faith, 
they tell us ; Faith being, for many of them, a 
vague subjective emotion merely; while for 
others, it is reliance upon some external au- 
thority. For multitudes among us that author- 
ity is the Bible ; for others, it is the Church. 
Or the authority inheres more immediately in 
a person : in a Pope, as the appointed organ 



42 ON REASON AND FAITH. 

of infallibility, in matters of a moral and reli- 
gious order ; or in " my priest," who, as a sort 
of little conduit, distributes to me such 
measure of the living water as he deems good 
for me ; or in " my preacher," who generally 
condenses all the infallibilities of Books, and 
of Churches, and of Priests, into himself ! In 
this way, from the theological side of the con- 
troversy, Faith is made to seem at enmity 
with Eeason, wherever religious truth is con- 
cerned. In the affairs of common life, Eeason 
may be followed, and trusted, by the devout 
and undevout alike. But she is not to gather 
up an inference, or to trace an analogy, which 
might tempt her upon forbidden ground — 
upon ground that is considered as belonging 
exclusively to Faith, that is. From this sphere, 
Eeason would be repelled as an intruder ; or, 
at most, called in to ratify conclusions dictated 
by Faith. 

Such teaching is common, and very popular, 
as we know, in the believing world; such 
notions are in controlling ascendency in all 
our orthodox schools and churches ; the piti- 
ful results being obvious in the character, or 
lack of character, of so many who " profess 
and call themselves Christians " ; especially 
among the weaker disciples of such schools. 
Whenever a reason is asked of these breth- 



ON REASON AND FAITH. 43 

ren for "the hope that is in them," instead 
of giving the best they can " with meekness 
and fear," the request is very generally re- 
sented, as an intrusion upon the forbidden 
ground I have just defined. " What ! " re- 
plies the startled disciple, " do you not know- 
that your question touches matters of Faith ? 
What have you to do then with reasoning 
about such things?" And that sort of an- 
swer is deemed pertinent, and sufficient, quite 
commonly ; not by the ignorant or supersti- 
tious only, but by men of penetration and 
good judgment both within and without the 
Churches. " On such things I never allow 
myself to reason," said a legal luminary of 
New York some time since ; parrying a diffi- 
culty touching Faith which an eminent Scien- 
tist, then on a visit to this country, had started 
in talk. 1 

Now, there are, or there might be, circum- 
stances 'mid which such an evasion might be al- 
lowable ; for a man may have answers satisfac- 
tory to himself, as to matters of a difficult nature 
affecting his religious beliefs and feelings, but 
which he may be unable, or unwilling, to defend 
in formal argument. He may have reasoned the 
subject thoroughly out ; but it does not follow 

ir The Scientist was Mr. Tyndall: the legal light, the 
then leader of the New York bar. 



44 ON REASON AND FAITH. 

that lie must go over all the evidence afresh, 
whensoever, or by whomsoever, it may be 
demanded of him. Or a man may have taken 
refuge from harassing doubts in the general 
concensus of the Christian world ; or he may 
have found rest for mind and heart through 
the sweet and wholesome influences which 
Christ's truth has exerted upon his nature 
and conduct; and these, surely, together, or 
singly, may be allowed to suffice for a man ; 
without his joining a perpetual debating so- 
ciety, where every little caviller has a right to 
catechize him about his faith. But if the gen- 
tleman who waived the scientist aside with 
the pious reply just given meant to say, that 
all reasoning upon things taught in the name 
of Faith is to be resented as intrusive ; or that 
there are some matters so sacred in them- 
selves, or from their associations, that all in- 
quiry into them, or about them, is to be re- 
garded as sinfully presumptuous ; or if he 
meant to assert his belief in some authority 
above Eeason, an authority having the right 
to settle all such matters dogmatically, in 
which settlement men are to acquiesce with- 
out question or misgiving ; why, then, the an- 
swer to the scientist was not only evasive, but 
silly, spite of its piety. For there is no such 
authority lodged anywhere, to which men 



ON REASON AND FAITH. 45 

may resort for infallible answers to difficult 
questions, in theology or in any other sphere 
of thought, for the verifying of claims put 
forth as true in this world of conflicting opin- 
ions and professions — thus saving men the 
pain of seeking truth for themselves, should 
they be determined to enter upon, and to fol- 
low the perilous quest whithersoever it may 
lead. Men have felt such pain very acutely, 
at times ; and have turned imploringly to this 
oracle or to that, where doubt might be dis- 
sipated, as they hoped, and the intellect be 
satisfied, and the conscience assured. But 
peace for the intellectually distressed is not 
to be so found, except of a stupid kind. 

" But is not the Bible given to do these very 
things for us ? " some one of my readers may 
be inwardly asking. To whom it might be 
answered, that the Bible may render such serv- 
ice to those who accept it passively, or un- 
questioningly ; but what of the men who will 
start farther back than the mere declarations 
of the Book, and of the reputation in which it 
is held ; asking — "What is the Bible ? and, — 
Whence did it get its authority to dictate con- 
clusions to men, upon questions and interests 
so vast and so bewildering? Such men are 
not to be answered by simply saying — " The 
Bible is the Word of God"; for that is the 



46 ON REASON AND FAITH. 

very claim to be decided ; which decision can 
only be reached, to the satisfaction of the 
sceptically inclined, through a process of in- 
vestigation into the evidence alleged or allege- 
able in support of the Divine authority of the 
Book. That is conceded by the most cautious 
of our safe-going theologians ; who tell us, so 
naively, that the office of Reason is to certify 
the claims of Divine Revelation, and to in- 
terpret the message which it brings to men. 
That bit of comfort used to be graciously con- 
ceded by theological experts to believers in 
Reason, as if that were a trifling matter to 
grant. Not only do such certifying and inter- 
preting constitute a life-work full of difficulty 
to the best equipped, however, but the point 
to be noted here is this : that such concession 
to Reason really makes Reason the arbiter in 
all religious questions. 

So too of the Church, to which others betake 
themselves for light, and peace, and a good hope. 
There are millions of men and women who ac- 
cept its counsels, and creeds, and decrees, as 
final and absolute ; all reasoning as to the re- 
liability of such expedients being deemed im- 
pertinent by them. But the Church, it should 
be borne in mind, is an historic institution; 
whose credentials to teach must be authenti- 
cated by evidence which Reason must weigh 



ON REASON AND FAITH 47 

and approve, before men can be summoned to 
sit at her feet in unquestioning silence. 

All this will be counted strange, no doubt, 
as coming from one who seems to have some 
respect for Faith lying in the background of 
his thoughts ; yet were it an inexplicable thing 
to me, that any thinking man should esteem 
what I am here saying strange, as applying to 
the Bible, or as applying to the Church. For 
with what are our Christian libraries filled? 
"With catalogues, simply, of dogmas and doc- 
trines and decrees, into the validity of which 
we are forbidden to inquire ? Nay : but with 
stores of evidence and of argument and of 
criticism, very largely, which a learned and 
laborious Eeason has gathered in confirmation 
and in elucidation of Christian credenda. And 
to these, as I understand her, the Church re- 
fers the inquirer for proof of her mission and 
authority, and for evidence authenticating the 
Bible as a revelation from God. Aye : even the 
Latin Church, most pronounced in her condem- 
nation of Eeason, filling her disciples with a 
flurry of fear on the mere mention of the 
word, — even she is driven, in the last resort, 
to fall back upon the very attestations which 
at other times she contemns. As witness the 
work of her scholars, and critics, and apolo- 
gists — of which classes of craftsmen the Church 



48 ON REASON AND FAITH. 

of Rome has many — who, in their way, have 
been as busy and laborious as any, in vindi- 
cating by vast learning, and by far-reaching 
research, those foundations of Faith which lie 
beneath all assumed infallibilities, and of all 
dogmatic decrees ; no less an authority than 
the late Cardinal Newman having told us, 
that even " the acts and words " of the sacred 
Pontiff " must be carefully scrutinized and 
weighed, before we can accept them as infalli- 
ble." But scrutinizing and weighing are acts 
of the Reason, I take it. Upon Reason, there- 
fore, the author of the " Grammar of Assent " 
being witness, ecclesiastical dogma inevitably 
depends. 

What I am here contending for, then, not 
as a concession from authority of any sort, but 
as an organic necessity of the human mind, is 
asserted, or assented to, by those most jealous 
of Reason in matters of Religion. All men, of 
any tolerable degree of sagacity, holding what- 
ever creed they may happen to hold, are com- 
pelled to admit in the long run, that the claims 
of Reason are first, and fundamental. " You 
must philosophize," said Aristotle ; " and if 
any man say you must not philosophize, 
yet in saying that he doth philosophize " : 
which, put into the speech of to-day, amounts 
to this : — You reason when you deny reason, 



ON EEASON AND FAITH. 49 

or even when you deem reasoning sinful. For 
you must be moved by some reason, or reasons, 
surely, when you deny a man's right to reason 
upon religious dogmas. Men of intellectual 
acuteness, while holding strongly to Christian 
Faith themselves, have seen and allowed this. 
" Keason is the only faculty we have where- 
with to judge of anything, even Eevelation 
itself," said the author of the "Analogy" ; 
while Locke has a touch of humor in his state- 
ment of the truth I am contending for. 
"Those who are for laying aside the use of 
Eeason in matters pertaining to Eevelation," 
said the author of the " Essay on the Human 
Understanding," "resemble one who should 
put out his eyes to make use of a telescope ! " 

But this statement of the case in behalf of 
Eeason, may be construed as precluding all 
possible use for Faith, in the moral and spir- 
itual education of men. I have seemed all 
along, perhaps, to be driving full upon that 
conclusion. Nay: I may even be taken to 
have asserted it, in saying that Eeason is the 
arbiter of the truths upon which Faith rests. 
But the statement is not complete : Another 
side of the story has yet to be presented. 
Let those of my readers who may have been 
haunted with the suspicion, that all was being 
conceded by me that the baldest rationalism 



• 



50 ON KEASON AND FAITH. 

could demand, take breath here, therefore ; for 
in what is yet to be said, material will be 
found for hope, I trust, that the cause of Faith 
admits of fair defence. Most of what I have 
said has been mainly preliminary to that end, 
indeed. 

I have been trying to vindicate the rights 
of Reason, against those who, in the interests 
of Religion, as they think, are in the habit of 
doing those rights defiance ; creating an im- 
pression upon the minds of their disciples that 
there is some sort of necessary antagonism be- 
tween Reason and Faith ; asserting the infer- 
ence, very obvious to them, that the latter can 
only survive in its purity and power, when the 
former is denied all liberty to utter itself 
freely ; — a fanatical conceit that is proving very 
hurtful to our Christian creed. I know some- 
thing of the temptations that abound, for men 
of a devout temperament and disposition to 
take refuge from intellectual distractions 
affecting Religion in dogmatic authorities ; 
some good people being in a state of lively 
alarm just now, from one of those crusades 
against all faith and piety which come and go 
in the lapsing of the centuries. The predom- 
inant tendencies of thought and research 
for some time, have been setting in a direction 
foreign, at least, to that which they had fol- 



ON KEASON AND FAITH. 51 

lowed for ages. Science has been busy chiefly 
with material organisms, and with laws and 
forces assumed, by some, to be inherently of 
them; Philosophy, as distinct from Science, 
having lost much of the interest with which 
it once, and for long, inspired men. From the 
marvelous discoveries made in the prosecution 
of such aims, Science has become somewhat 
vain; speaking no longer in her old modest, 
cautious way, but in a dogmatic, intolerant, 
oracular way; showing herself particularly 
haughty toward Eeligion. JSTot on the ground 
that all matters in dispute between them have 
been heard and decided against Eeligion ; but 
mainly from prejudices and presumptions — if 
one may be allowed to say so daring a thing. 
The spirit of the inductive philosophy seems 
to have almost forsaken us. What Butler 
complained of in the temper of the unbelief of 
his time, and which he did so much to correct, 
has reappeared in our own, but from some- 
what different occasions. . . . "It has 
come to pass, I know not how," said that great 
thinker and dialectician, " that Christianity is 
not so much a subject for inquiry, but that it 
is now, at length, discovered to be fictitious " — 
that being just the temper that is felt to be so 
offensive, by many among us, in those who as- 
sail Christianity from a scientific standpoint 



52 01ST REASON AND FAITH. 

to-day. Scarcely is there a- truth that the 
Christian world has held sacred that is not 
rudely denied ; scarcely a feeling it has cher- 
ished as holy which is not insulted. God, as 
a person, has been relegated out of the order 
and government of the Universe ; matter be- 
ing boldly credited with "the promise and 
potency of every form and quality of life ! " 
Even so ! ISTo marvel if men of spiritual sensi- 
bility and experience have been startled and 
offended by such extravagances. But still 
more offensive to Christian men of taste and 
discernment, is the pity that is affected in 
infidel circles toward believers in Religion ; 
with the covert sneer that one detects from 
time to time in the freethinker; with the 
bigotted babblement that prevails in little 
coteries of scientific neophytes! It is these 
things that do so much to drive men of Faith 
into extreme attitudes of mind toward a 
good deal of Modern Thought; and which 
tempt some of them to seek a refuge from all 
disturbances of their faith within enclosures 
from which all doubt and debate are shut out. 
Hence many of our so-called " conversions to 
Rome " ; with renewed reverence for " pil- 
grimages " and " relics " in some of the oldest 
seats of Christian civilization ; to the shame of 
all the centuries of boasted progress. 



ON REASON AND FAITH. 53 

But these are unworthy ways by which to 
escape the dangers that threaten Christ's re- 
ligion in our time. Faith must be vindicated 
by men of better intellectual build, of loftier 
courage, and of more reliable resources, than 
the men who shelter themselves beneath the 
skirts of priests. For it can be vindicated on 
the field of evidence and argument. But 
Faith as rationally defined, and as capable of 
being admitted among the ruling powers of a 
healthy moral life : Faith of the sort that 
Tillotson conceived of when he called it " a 
real persuasion about anything, whether 
grounded upon sense, or reason, or Divine 
Bevelation." Our popular theologies are re- 
sponsible for a vast amount of sheer fanati- 
cism touching this matter of Faith; which 
would seem, as set forth by some of them, to 
be a blindly despotic power in the soul, un- 
enlightened by reason, and unrestrained by 
law. But the Divine Kuler can no more be 
the Author of confusion in the Spiritual realm 
than in the realm of Nature. Faith is one 
member only in the organization of faculties 
and affections which constitute a complete hu- 
manity; filling its own place, and doing its 
own work in harmony with all the rest. Man 
cannot live by sense alone, or by the intellect 
alone, or by faith alone. The constitution of 



54: ON EEASON AND FAITH. 

his nature, and the necessities of his manifold 
life, demand the concurrent and sympathetic 
exercise of all. And for this, it might seem 
the Almighty has hedged us about with diffi- 
culties, as incentives to an inquisitive Reason 
on the one hand, and as tests of a reverent 
Faith on the other — if one may venture a 
teleological guess ; the ultimate purpose of the 
disciplinary process being what Butler calls — 
" an enlightened obedience to the will of God." 
The task of determining the just limits of each 
is difficult, but by this we are taught the need 
that exists in all moral investigations for at- 
tention and conscientiousness; lest Reason 
should be inflated by pride, and lest Faith 
should degenerate to credulity. Christian 
character approaches its highest perfection 
when both Reason and Faith contribute, each 
its proper quota of help, to its education and 
development. We need not become blas- 
phemers in the name of Reason, nor cowards 
in the name of Faith. 

But men are seldom tempted to yield to this 
weakness, except when Faith holds upon the 
higher truths of Religion. All other Faith is 
deemed a perfectly legitimate and a very ra- 
tional feeling. Yet is Christian Faith, as an 
active principle or affection, essentially the 
same Faith as that which men are exercising 



ON EEASON AND FAITH. 55 

and relying on in their daily doings, with no 
suspicion that it is a thing needing to be apolo- 
gized for. It is simply the belief of what those 
who are possessed by it hold to be facts. Or 
it is trust in what they take to be reliable tes- 
timony : in testimony having the same guaran- 
tees for its trustworthiness as those which men 
are accustomed to rely on in accepting prom- 
ises and pledges in the conduct of this world's 
affairs — promises and pledges of tremendous 
consequence sometimes. Faith of this sort is 
not only found to be a practicable principle or 
power in life, but an inevitably necessary prin- 
ciple ; without which all confidence, and all 
cooperative activity, would be at an end ; hu- 
man society falling speedily into disorder and 
ruin. The man who should resolve to submit 
his thought and action only to the requirement 
of sense, or to the tests of science, or to the 
exactions of logical demonstration, would put 
himself out of gear with every form and func- 
tion of life around him. All deep confidences, 
all high enterprises, all courage, and ambition, 
and hope, would die without Faith. For 
knowledge is personal, and therefore of lim- 
ited range ; so that if we are to see the world 
beyond our own narrow bounds, and to put 
ourselves into practical communications with 
it, we must see it with others' eyes, and feel it 



56 ON REASON AND FAITH. 

through the sensibilities of others ; implicitly 
accepting testimony to multitudes of facts 
which would have no existence for us without 
Faith. Nay : the very sternest Positivist, who 
professes to abjure all such dependence, is busy 
in collecting and classifying his phenomena in 
serene reliance upon Faith : upon faith in the 
postulates and laws of "the higher reason" 
— those universal and necessary beliefs which 
have their evidence in themselves ; such spon- 
taneous intuitive trust being an organic neces- 
sity of our nature : preceding sense, and veri- 
fying its reports, and sanctioning its conclu- 
sions ; testing even the discoveries of the 
scientist, and guiding the processes of the logi- 
cian, and underlying the very axioms of the 
mathematician ! 

By constitution, then, and from necessities 
imposed upon us by our relationships and sur- 
roundings in life, we are creatures of Faith as 
well as of Reason. We must, or may, reason, 
then ; and we must, or may, believe. Within 
certain limits only ? " Yes," says the Theolo- 
gian, " only within certain limits. You must 
not push your scrutinies into the sphere of 
things ' sacred ' : you must confine your rea- 
sonings within lines prescribed by the Church." 
While the Sceptic is equally dogmatic, in tell- 
ing me that I must not believe in the " super- 



ON EEASON AND FAITH. 57 

natural," that I must only believe what is rea- 
sonable ; the two, — the Theologian and the 
Sceptic, — being, for once, thus far agreed. 
Now, the impracticability of the Theologian's 
counsel I have already made plain, I may as- 
sume. But that of the Sceptic is even more im- 
practicable. I am not to believe in the Super- 
natural. I find a difficulty, however, in the 
way of my adopting this dictum ; for I cannot 
draw a continuous line of distinction between 
the so-called supernatural and the natural ; 
any more than I can draw such a line between 
things " sacred " and things " secular." Nor 
have I come upon any other man, or any body 
of men, very much more knowing than my- 
self as to these matters. How am I to be 
made aware, then, when I come upon the for- 
bidden territory in the advance of my beliefs ? 
For advance they will, as my knowledge in- 
creases ; showing me how many things are be- 
lievable which in my ignorance I esteemed in- 
credible, or which I deemed supernatural, it 
may be. As a matter of fact, the frontier of 
the supernatural has been pushed farther and 
farther back, as the domain of the natural has 
widened to men's apprehensions, all through 
what we call the ages of progress. Where the 
line of demarcation runs to-day, who shall pre- 
tend to say ? As to whether there is any such 



58 ON REASON AND FAITH. 

line marking off the two domains, indeed, men 
of sense and penetration are becoming more 
and more sceptical ; the more outspoken among 
them declaring, that this word " supernatural " 
is a mere conventionalism in speech — one of 
the many words by which we hide our igno- 
rance while seeming all-knowing. There are 
no such frontiers as our professional talkers 
and writers have given unsophisticated hearers 
and readers to understand there are. The in- 
conceivably vast, manifold Cosmos, the Or- 
derly Whole, is one domain; we in our 
studies and manipulations of it breaking it up 
into departments for more convenient hand- 
ling — that is all. Nor is the alternative lim- 
itation of my sceptical admonitor of much 
more avail. 1 am not to believe in the unrea- 
sonable. But who is to decide for me in all 
cases what is reasonable, or what is unreason- 
able ? Myself ? or some council of logical ex- 
perts ? Left to myself, I shall go on, of course, 
with the lights that may be in me, doing what 
I have all along been doing, what all men of 
an active, inquisitive intelligence are habitually 
doing : — balancing claims upon their beliefs ; 
accepting some, denying others, according to 
preponderating probabilities weighing for or 
against the claims preferred; the dictum of 
the Sceptic being found to have contributed 



ON REASON AND FAITH. 59 

no helpful guidance toward our attaining to 
certainty, as to what we may believe, or not 
believe. While to submit to the dictation of 
the experts, — the old priestly dictation under 
another name — would be to surrender my in- 
tellectual independence ; and that were intol- 
erable to a Freethinker. 

No: the only limitation that can be pre- 
scribed for our beliefs is, that no statement or 
inference shall be accepted as reliable, which 
is in manifest contradiction to any well au- 
thenticated principle or law directly bearing 
upon the matter submitted for belief. Beyond 
that, belief may have free range; being 
guided, of course, by good sense, and re- 
strained from taking up with foolish notions, 
by large knowledge, and a wise discretion. 
Now I venture the affirmation, that there is 
not a sane " believer " within the compass of 
the Christian world who is not ready to ad- 
mit, that wherever absolute, necessary contra- 
diction can be shown to exist between any 
article of his creed and any law or principle 
certified by Sense or by Science, that there all 
talk about faith would be insufferably absurd. 
The faith of Christian men rests on probable 
evidence. 

Faith may go whithersoever she will, then ; 
or whithersoever any tolerably well-grounded 



60 ON SEASON AND FAITH. 

evidence may justify her going. And it is 
something to be allowed to break away from 
the narrow creed of the Materialist. We may 
even go out 'mid the facts and phenomena of 
Christian history, gathering up data for be- 
liefs — or which beget beliefs when gathered — 
from records of spiritual experiences, and from 
the social effects of the doctrine of Jesus ; 
material thus accumulating on our hands for a 
tolerably complete orthodox creed ; we finally 
accepting as credible, it maybe, "mysteries" 
from which Reason at first started back. But 
all this upon the supposition, of course, that 
we have jealously respected every law ruling 
in the constitution and course of things, nat- 
ural or moral. "But we cannot believe in 
things unreasonable," it may be said. To 
which it might be replied that we certainly 
can, and do ; being careful to mark the exact 
logical force of the word unreasonable; not 
clothing it with a, positive force, as is so often 
carelessly done, but with a privative force 
simply ; the word unreasonable meaning, when 
strictly taken, not what is contrary to Reason, 
but only that which Reason cannot as yet take 
in. The non-reasonableness, or the non-believ- 
ableness, of a matter may rest on either of 
two grounds : either on the ground that be- 
lief in such matter would be in clear contra- 



ON EEASON" AND FAITH. 61 

diction to some unquestionable truth ; or the 
non-reasonableness may be simply temporal, 
or contingent — as when resting on, or rising 
out of, ignorance, as so often — which ignorance 
being dissipated by the incoming of larger 
knowledge touching the matter, that which 
was before unreasonable becomes reasonable ; 
the domain of Reason being widened and her 
vision strengthened by such increase of light. 
For much of such increase of sphere and fac- 
ulty, Eeason has been indebted to Faith ; Faith 
having often ventured forward beyond the 
boundaries of the known into the dark, so to 
speak ; bringing back reports that have en- 
couraged Eeason to advance across the line 
till then deemed impassable; she so coining 
upon truths, at times, which she has adopted 
into her own creed ; Faith being to Reason, in 
this connection, what hypothesis is so often 
to an advancing Science. Locke's oriental 
Prince scouted the statement of the Dutch 
ambassador, that water in his own country 
was sometimes so hard and strong that it 
would bear an elephant ; the unreasonable for 
him resting upon uninformed experience. The 
work of Copernicus, with that of Galileo, 
startled the whole ecclesiastical world of the 
time to a frenzy of alarm and hate ; that men 
should dare to deny the Divine Oracles, and 



62 ON REASON AND FAITH. 

to teach what was so outrageously contrary to 
the scientific decisions of the Church ; — for the 
Church was then supposed to know, and to be 
competent to decide, everything, as being the 
organ of the Divine infallibility. But time 
passed on, and the rage of Church rulers died 
down ; the mammoth mechanism of the heav- 
ens maintaining its serenely steadfast order, 
till the unreasonable became the reasonable, 
the incredible the credible ! 

Christian Faith is not the idle or simply sen- 
timental thing, then, which some men so 
lightly, or so scornfully, assume it to be ; but 
is as rational a power, in its place, as any that 
have to do with the conduct of moral life. 
Let the facts upon which it holds be shown to 
be no facts, but inventions, or superstitious 
conceits simply, and then men may smile at, 
or scoff at, the faith that should be so deluded. 
But as long as Christian men can produce as 
reliable reasons for belief of its principles and 
doctrines as can be shown in support of beliefs 
in the facts of secular history, or for the trust 
that men repose in the testimony of their fel- 
lows, not only is scoffing out of place, but the 
duty is imposed upon every man coming to a 
knowledge of those reasons, to put himself 
into a fair attitude of mind toward Christian 
evidences ; that they may work in him what- 



ON REASON AND FAITH. 63 

ever conviction of the truth of Christ's reli- 
gion they may be capable of working. For 
the question is not between Faith and Sense, 
or between Faith and Demonstration, as Scep- 
ticism so generally states the case; but the 
question is : What kind and amount of perti- 
nent proof, will warrant and require our trust- 
ing the alleged truths of Keligion? And 
when the controversy between Faith and Un- 
belief assumes that shape, Faith is ready with 
her witnesses ; with no fear of an adverse de- 
cision from those sitting in judgment. Bear- 
ing in mind always, however, that while the 
evidence for Christianity may be sufficient, it 
may not be exhaustive of all difficulty ; nor 
always satisfactory to the Christian " believer." 
But we do not accept Christianity because of 
its intellectual difficulties, but in spite of them. 
There may arise occasions in the career of the 
most intrepid inquirer, indeed, when both Eea- 
son and Faith are brought to a stand ; when 
a man can neither affirm nor deny as to some 
point at issue in debate ; but a sensible man, 
when he has thus reached the end of his tether, 
will neither resent the limitations which the 
Creator has imposed upon his powers, nor say 
in a fit of anger, — Because I cannot know 
everything I will believe nothing. 

Some of my readers will say, or feel, I sus- 



64 ON BEASON AND FAITH. 

pect, that a very "low 
prevailed throughout this discussion ; but that 
is because I have been chiefly concerned to 
find a foothold for Faith in Reason. With 
that accomplished, our higher views of Faith 
may come in unquestioned. I know what is 
missed. Faith is an inspiration of the spiritual 
consciousness, as well as a formulated collec- 
tion of opinions or dogmas. There is no con- 
ceivable limit to be prescribed to the power of 
Faith; when, having passed down from the 
head to the heart, so to speak, it seizes a man's 
deepest feelings, and gives new tone to his 
convictions, kindling his enthusiasms into 
glowing flame. For I don't believe in the arti- 
ficial distinctions of the theologians as to vari- 
ous hinds of faith. The difference between a 
cold, formal faith, and a faith heroic or se- 
raphic, is owing, very largely, to differences in 
the nature, and the varying degrees of impor- 
tance, of the truths apprehended by faith; 
somewhat to differences in the constitutional 
capacity in men for intense feeling of any 
sort. In one man faith may assume the form 
of mere opinion, — if we may so degrade the 
word — while in another it may gather into the 
consistency of a conviction, while in a third it 
may kindle into a rapturous love ; distinctively 
Christian faith having always a good deal of 



ON BEASON AND FAITH. 65 

feeling in it ; the intellectual element seeming 
wholly lost, at times, in the homage and trust 
of the heart for Him whom the Gospel sets 
forth as the great object of Faith ; Christ be- 
ing the centre upon which all Christian truth 
converges. Should it be said, that this is only 
a little fanatic mysticism thrown in as leaven 
for my rationalism, I might answer, that the 
man knows little of human nature who has 
not learned that it is rationalistic and mystical 
by turns ; and that in a broad and profound 
religious experience, the influence of both will 
always be seen and felt. 

It may seem a hard, complicate task to get 
at what religious people call " a knowledge of 
the truth," with the embarrassing entangle- 
ments round us, and the liabilities to go wrong 
before us, which in following the light of Kea- 
son we are sure to encounter. "Is it not 
easier," some shrinking soul may say, " to fol- 
low the advice of my priest ; (or of my 
preacher) who tells me that it is safer to he- 
lieve than to reason ? " But believe what ? 
The whole task which it was thought to evade 
is before a man, when once that question con- 
fronts him. No : we are not to be nursed into 
a strong healthy spiritual manhood by any 
such process. Eeason may be thus put to 
sleep for a time, but on awaking it will resume 



66 ON EEASON AND FAITH. 

its perplexing questionings. There are risks, 
no doubt, in seeking truth for ourselves ; but 
they are not very serious, if only a right bent 
of moral purpose be in us. Nor is the task of 
finding half as difficult as timid souls are apt 
to imagine. For it is not all truth we are 
called to know before doubt can be laid ; but 
only enough of truth to give a Christ-ward 
direction and inspiration to the affections and 
life. " The evidence for religion," says Bishop 
Butler, " is fully sufficient for all the purposes 
of probation, how far soever it may be from 
being satisfactory to the purposes of curios- 
ity." Or as Pascal puts substantially the same 
thought : — " There is light enough for those 
whose sincere wish it is to see, and darkness 
enough to confound those of an opposite dis- 
position." The folly of some who really de- 
sire to believe the truths of Beligion, but fail 
to find quiet of mind, is seen in this : in their 
virtually stipulating, that every difficulty that 
troubles them shall be solved, and every mys- 
tery they encounter made plain, before they 
will enter the school of Christ. But men of 
sense and penetration as to these things are 
forward to confess, that in the sum of Chris- 
tian credenda they find many things beyond 
their power to explain, or to comprehend. 
Enough for them that the unknown can never 



ON KEASON AND FAITH. 67 

invalidate the known. Things insoluble sel- 
dom prove occasions of stumbling to men of a 
wise thoughtfulness ; recollecting, as they are 
so frequently called to recollect, the limited 
range of the strongest human faculties, and 
the mists that so often envelope the higher 
attitudes of truth. Happily for all of us prone 
to doubt, faith in Jesus Christ is a matter of 
very much narrower dimensions than faith in 
all the theologies ! The truth that saves is 
simple, said Matthew Arnold. 1 "Truth lies 
in a little compass, and narrow room. Vitals 
in religion are few, " said Dr. Whichcote. 2 It 
is a blessed thing for a man to be able to say 
of crowds of claims put forth by our various 
orthodoxies : — About these things, or those 
things, or the other, I care little. For me they 
are matters of uncertain obligation. One may 
hold them, or dismiss them, as may please his, 
fancy, or his taste ; or according to the meas- 
ure of respect he may deem it proper to show 
toward opinions, inferences, speculations, de- 
vout conceits, that have come down to us em- 
balmed in the reverence of ages ; but holding 
them, or dismissing them, the man is no better, 
and no worse, as a Christian. How much so- 

1 "Literature and Dogma, 1,1 Chap. vi. 
2 Quoted by Principal Tullock in "Rational Theology in 
the Seventeenth Century," Vol. 2, p. 108. 



68 ON KEASON AND FAITH. 

ever they may affect his "standing" in the 
Church to which he may belong, they will 
count for very little when the final estimate is 
passed upon him. 

Reason and Faith, then, these two : — have I 
prevailed upon any of my readers to revere 
them both as divine ? If so, est Deo gratia. 
Let us listen wisely, prayerfully, patiently, to 
the two voices that tell of earthly and of 
heavenly things, and we may find that all 
seeming discord between the two dies ; the 
two testimonies blending sweetly into one. 
Or the perfect concord may never be known 
here, since here we" know but in part " ; but 
" when that which is perfect is come, then that 
which is in part shall be done away." Mean- 
while, let us use all the faculties God has given 
us, whether of head or of heart, fearlessly, but 
humbly, in following after rest for our restless- 
ness. Something may be done even now to 
such end, by large inquiry, by disciplined 
thought, by opening the mind to all revela- 
tions, come whence, or through whatever ave- 
nues, they may. But much more, perhaps, by 
a sweet simplicity, by tenderness, by devout- 
ness, and by a childlike following of the light 
we have till God shall make it more. 



III. 



ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLI- 
BILITY. 



69 



III. 

ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLI- 
BILITY. 



Inspikation is a boldly metaphorical term : 
a term belonging to the dialect of poets rather 
than that of philosophers. It is a loose, fluid 
term, lending itself freely to writing or dis- 
course which does not call for close definition, 
or for nice discrimination in use. The word 
means, literally, an inbreathing or a breathing 
into ; being applied to designate any invasion 
of the human mind or heart by any strong, 
quickening, illuminating, or uplifting influence 
from without ; poets, painters, orators, heroes, 
and others, being commonly spoken of as 
having been inspired, upon their having done 
or produced something that has moved men in 
numbers to an enthusiastic admiration; as if 
the achievement was too wonderful for a man 
to have accomplished of himself, simply. 

Yet has this loose, metaphorical term been 
compelled to do service for centuries, in discus- 
sions of very difficult questions in history and 
philosophy; to which discussions only terms 

71 



72 ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

of a well-defined and an unvarying meaning 
would have been admitted, one might have 
supposed. But such a supposition had been 
foolish. 'No other terms were available to 
those engaging in such discussions than meta- 
phorical terms. To convey any conception at 
all to men's minds of the action of the Spirit 
of God upon the human spirit, in the way of 
imparting knowledge, or of quickening it to a 
higher life, could only be done in parable, so 
to speak : through similitudes drawn from hu- 
man proceedings and applied to proceedings 
assumed to be Divine. Hence the abounding 
anthropomorphisms that we have, and of ne- 
cessity have, in Biblical accounts of God's com- 
munications to, and dealings with, men. But 
this necessity was sure to tempt men to a good 
deal of purely fanciful or fanatical speaking 
and writing, in their dealing with the question 
of Inspiration, whether claimed for men, or 
for Books. 

Long before the Christian era, claims had 
been preferred by leaders among the Jewish 
people in behalf of certain writings of their 
ancient lawgivers and prophets, notably in be- 
half of those ascribed to Moses, to an excep- 
tional character and value ; in that they had 
come directly from Jehovah, the very words 
having been dictated by His Spirit, as the 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 73 

Babbis held ; the writings so venerated being 
at length gathered up into the collection which 
we call the Old Testament ; uncertainty pre- 
vailing, however, for a time, among the au- 
thorities, as to whether this or the other 
book, of less established note, should be ad- 
mitted into the sacred " Canon " or Kule, as the 
collection came to be called. To this Jewish 
collection of " sacred books," was added, later 
on, another, when Christianity had produced a 
literature, which we call the New Testament ; 
for which Christian Scribes asserted an au- 
thority equal to that which the Jew had as- 
serted for his Mosaic Torah. Particularly 
was this high authority asserted for certain 
Biographies of Jesus that had come into circu- 
lation, as also for writings of some of the 
Apostles of Jesus; the two collections, the 
Hebrew and the Christian, coming several 
centuries after Christ, to make up our Bible as 
we have it to-day, substantially ; all parts of 
which Christian disciples have been required 
to accept as infallible, because inspired. 

But here we come at once upon the vague- 
ness of our word Inspiration in this service. 
That the writers of the books of the Bible, or 
the men who chiefly speak in and through 
those books, were often inspired in the sense of 
having their minds penetrated and possessed 



74 ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

by true, noble, holy thoughts, which inspira- 
tions moved them to utter themselves with a 
quickening, elevating, and morally wholesome 
effect upon the affections and consciences of 
men with whom they had to do, and of men of 
the many generations since, as it has fallen 
out ; — to these claims nearly all men of an 
adequate moral discernment assent to-day, I 
take it ; whatever may be their mental atti- 
tude toward other claims preferred for the 
Bible. But that sort or degree of faith in the 
inspiration of Scripture is not enough for our 
Christian Kabbis, of the severely "orthodox 
persuasion." A disciple in their schools, to at- 
tain good standing, must be prepared to say 
how far the inspiration extends ; or, rather, 
must avow his belief in the declaration that it 
extends to every word and syllable in the 
manifold Volume. To secure an explicit con- 
fession to this effect, an adjective is appended, 
very commonly, by orthodox religious teach- 
ers, to the noun Inspiration, — "plenary," 
" verbal," " inerrant " ; disciples being required 
to profess faith in the adjective as well as in 
the noun : to declare that the inspiration of the 
Bible is full, that is ; or that it applies to and 
penetrates every word in the Book ; or that no 
trace of error or mistake can be found in it. 
It is only just to say, that none of the great 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 75 

historic Churches have put forth this extreme 
pretension. The great Ecumenical creeds 
know nothing of it. Nor can we find it in any 
of the less important symbols of individual ec- 
clesiastical Bodies. The Greek Church and 
the Latin Church are sober and modest in 
what they say bearing upon the question of 
the inspiration of Scripture; as is also the 
Anglican Church ; as witness the Sixth Article 
of the celebrated XXXIX : " Holy Scripture 
containeth all things necessary to salvation : so 
that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be 
proved thereby, is not to be required of any 
man, that it should be believed as an article of 
the Faith." Not a word or a hint have we 
here, it will be observed, as to members of the 
Anglican communion being under any sort of 
obligation to hold that every word in our 
Bible is inspired ; and that in the sense that 
every word was dictated to Prophet, or Evan- 
gelist, or Apostle, by the Spirit of God. But 
though the Churches have been thus reserved 
in shaping their formularies of Faith touching 
the question of Inspiration, it is notorious that 
their teachers and preachers, particularly those 
of various branches of our Protestantism, have 
gone to the greatest lengths of extravagance 
in their dealing with the question. As wit- 
ness one of them : " The Bible is none other 



76 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

than the voice of Him that sitteth on the 
throne," says the Rev. "Wm. J. Burgon, B. D. 1 
" Every book of it, every chapter of it, every 
verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of 
it, every letter of it, is the direct utterance of 
the Most High." This bit of intemperate dec- 
lamation does not reflect much credit upon 
the scholarship of the Anglican Clergy of the 
time ; but it may nevertheless be taken as rep- 
resenting the prevailing teaching of the Chris- 
tian Church, or of its ministers, down from the 
earliest times. There is very little in the New 
Testament that can be brought to the support 
of the notion of " verbal " inspiration ; or of 
the claim that the Old Testament prophets 
were wholly passive under the influence of the 
Divine Spirit, in making known the mind of 
Almighty God to men. But in course of time, 
the veneration cherished for the writers both 
of the Old and New Testaments, or for the 
books which bore their names, attained to 
such heights, that every syllable going to 
make up the contents of the books was held 
to have come directly from Jehovah; the 
writers acting simply as amanuenses, or pen- 
men, to note down what was given them by 
the dictation of the Holy Ghost. This was 

'Fellow of Oriel Coll. Oxford. Sometime Gresham 
Lecturer in Divinity. 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 77 

the estimate, indicated more or less explicitly 
in writings that have come down to us, in 
which all the great Church Fathers held the 
Sacred Scriptures. To them, lawgivers, proph- 
ets, Apostles, were merely passive organs of 
Divine revelations. The inspired man was the 
lyre, simply; the Spirit of God was the 
plectrum which drew the required sound from 
the lyre. The prophet, or apostle, was the 
flute; the Spirit was the player of the flute. 
Even the rational-minded Clement, of Alex- 
andria, declares, that, under the influence of 
the Divine Logos, the human mind becomes 
like a harp in the hands of a player ; Cyprian 
affirming that the Christian apostles were sim- 
ply reeds, to whom the Holy Spirit dictated the 
things they were to speak or write. Some of 
the Christian Fathers manifestly sympathized 
with the notion of Philo, which he derived 
from the heathen, that the true prophet deliv- 
ered his message while in a state of ecstasy, 
or mania ; the proper action of his own mind 
being suspended for the time, or replaced by 
the inspiring presence in him of the Divine 
Logos. So that the believer in " verbal " in- 
spiration of our own time, may find abundant 
support for his faith in the Church Fathers. 1 

1 For confirmations and illustrations of all this, see Dr. 
Ladd's " Doctrine of Sacred Scripture," Vol 2, pp. 71-76. 



78 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

But the authority of the Fathers is worth 
very little in explorations into these matters. 
They knew nothing, of course, of what we 
now mean by Criticism ; while they had little 
or no opportunity for the exercise of whatever 
native critical faculty they may have possessed, 
in the way of searching examinations into the 
genuineness and authority of the Old Testa- 
ment books. The canon was practically closed 
before Christ came : was formally and finally 
closed in the year 90, A. d. by a majority vote 
in a council of Palestinian Jewish Eabbis ; 
which canon, or collection of books so accred- 
ited to be Divinely inspired, was received by 
the Christian Fathers on trust in the accumu- 
lated testimonies and traditions which had won 
for the books the high and solemn distinction. 
For the Church Fathers had little Hebrew at 
command, it would seem. What they did 
know of the Old Testament, from personal 
study, they knew through the Greek Version 
which we call the Septuagint ; a translation of 
the Old Bible which had been made nearly 
three centuries before Christ for the benefit of 
Israelites dwelling in Greek-speaking countries. 
For these and other reasons the first Church 
Fathers were incapable of sitting in critical 
judgment upon claims put in in behalf of the 
Hebrew Scriptures as infallibly inspired; 



ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 79 

equally, and in every component part. The 
early church authorities had to receive the 
Jewish sacred books upon faith in the work 
and word of the Jewish Scribes who had col- 
lected the books, and had discriminated be- 
tween them and other claimants to a place in 
the canon ; together with the incidental, gen- 
eral, and therefore vague, attestations of Jesus 
and His Apostles. The witness of Church 
Fathers in support of the claim that our Holy 
Scriptures are inspired throughout, down to 
every word and syllable ; and that all parts of 
the vast miscellaneous Collection are equally 
inspired, and therefore of equal authority in 
the formation of opinion and in the direction 
of conduct ; — as to these things the witness of 
Church Fathers is rather misleading than help- 
ful ; and is only to be cited in admonition of 
foolish handlings of the Word of God. It is 
proof of mental imbecility in the man who 
affirms, that because certain men became 
prominent at a very early period in ecclesias- 
tical affairs, they must have been the more 
capable of entering into, and of wisely adjudi- 
cating, all the questions of which Christian 
Scholarship has been slowly attaining to some 
degree of mastery through a struggle of fif- 
teen hundred years. The precise reverse of 
this is the truth. Church Fathers may be ao 



80 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

cepted as witnesses to facts coming under their 
own observation ; but as to attainments fitting 
them for the work of critically scrutinizing 
the credentials of ancient writings, or of float- 
ing traditions, they not only had few, but their 
inheritances and circumstances precluded all 
possibility of their having any of any effective 
and lasting account. Not till the " new learn- 
ing " had gone somewhat widely abroad over 
Western Christendom, was any attempt of 
consequence made to go back of the letter of 
Scripture as it was then received and taught, 
into a critical valuation of the text and teach- 
ings of our Sacred Books. And then came 
the first serious shock to the notion of " verbal" 
inspiration, with that of the absolute infalli- 
bility of all canonical Scriptures. 

One might well marvel as to how this ac- 
crediting of Divine inspiration to every sylla- 
ble in our Sacred Books found favor with men 
of intelligence and discernment in early times ; 
but still more may one wonder as to how the 
notion has continued in favor in the Churches, 
'mid the constantly increasing light that has 
been shed upon the Scriptures by a devout 
Scholarship, from the time of Erasmus down 
to our own. I have just been trying to indi- 
cate how the first Christians came to entertain 
the superstition. The belief in verbal inspira- 



ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 81 

tion was already in full possession of the Jew- 
ish religious mind ; which belief Jesus and His 
Apostles seemed to have authenticated, by 
their references to, and citations from, the an- 
cient Scriptures. It therefore passed without 
questioning into almost universal acceptance 
with the Primitive Church. Some early Chris- 
tian writers found difficulty in retaining faith 
in the generally prevalent assumption. Ori- 
gen, to wit, and Augustine, and even Jerome, 
who shows something like a fondness, indeed, 
for exposing the literary imperfections of St. 
Paul's writings. 

But the Church Fathers did not suffer 
themselves to be very much troubled by the 
solecisms, or the contradictions, or the ethical 
incongruities which they came across in the 
Old Testament books. They had a way of 
escape which is not open to us in like straits., 
They had a twofold, or a threefold sense to 
fall back upon, in dealing with any passage 
that puzzled them. When a meaning which 
lay upon the surface of a passage did not suit 
them, or which seemed incredible, they had a 
mystical meaning ready ; on the application of 
which all difficulty vanished. The time for 
criticism had not yet come ; nor was it to come 
for long ages. But the other occasion for 
wonder that I just now named, cannot be so 



82 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

readily excused, or explained away. After 
frequent exposure of the untrustworthiness of 
the old traditional view of our Holy Scrip- 
tures; after serious difficulties have been 
pointed out which it needlessly imposes upon 
Christian believers ; after it has been shown, 
again and again, in what unnecessary embar- 
rassments the traditional view lands the apolo- 
gist bent upon vindicating a rational respect 
and reverence for the Word of God ; our spir- 
itual guides, of the "evangelical" order, are 
still demanding that we believe in the dogma 
of verbal inspiration, or of the absolute infalli- 
bility of every syllable of our Bible ! How 
the belief gained currency in the " reformed 
churches," so-called, admits of easy explana- 
tion. The assumption was accepted passively, 
or from an incurious piet}^, by our Protestant 
forefathers ; just as the Eabbinic tradition had 
been accepted by the early Church Fathers. 
But in addition to this, there was a reason of 
peculiar force which favored its reception by 
the men who led in the revolt against the 
Romish hierarchy in the Sixteenth Century. 
Luther and his coadjutors had lost faith in an 
infallible Churchy and they therefore took read- 
ily to trust in an infallible Book ; which felt 
necessity of an infallible guide through all dif- 
ficulties in or about Eeligion, and of an infallible 



ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 83 

arbiter in all controversies, and of a readily 
available and an unimpeachable rule of opinion 
and conduct, continues to lend good counte- 
nance to the assumption of verbal inspiration. 
And yet, with the Scriptures open before us, 
opportunity being so afforded to all to " com- 
pare Scripture with Scripture ", and with 
sufficient learning — once almost wholly the 
possession of professional scholars, — in the 
hands of the people to enable them to look 
into, and to understand somewhat of, these 
questions, it is really marvelous that the old 
orthodox dogma retains the credit it does. 
For when disciples are told that every word 
of the Bible is inspired, it cannot be meant 
that all the words of the various versions, 
or translations, of the Scriptures, or the 
words of any one of them, are to be so es- 
teemed; for there are many hundreds ,of 
words in these versions in behalf of which no 
sane man would presume to prefer a claim to 
a special inspiration. Will it be preferred, 
then, in behalf of the ancient manuscripts of 
the Bible ? or of any one of them ? — the oldest 
and most complete? But what then should 
we do with the thousands upon thousands of 
various readings of these manuscripts ? Who 
shall say which readings correctly and pre- 
cisely represent the ipsissima verba which the 



84 ON LNSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

Spirit of God dictated to the original writers 
of our Biblical books ? And what, moreover, 
of the interpolations that are found in the 
Sacred Yolume ? and of manifest mistakes of 
copyists ? and of " emendations " made in the 
interests of " the Faith " ? and of citations 
from Pagan writers ? Those whom I am here 
trying to relieve of a groundless but very em- 
barrassing prejudice, will not accept all these 
as coming up to the measure of their require- 
ments. What, then, shall they do? for all 
these things are in their Bibles. It becomes 
obvious, that to satisfy the man who declares, 
in effect, that his faith will be undermined if 
you take away the comforting assurance that 
he has that every syllable in our Bible was 
dictated to this or the other writer by the 
Holy Ghost ; — it is clear that to meet his case 
— and multitudes like it — we must recover the 
original autographs of the sacred writers. But 
that, alas ! cannot be done ; not even to save 
men or women from being bereft of " comfort- 
ing " beliefs. Why don't the religious directors 
of these exacting people just hint to them, that 
the most they can fairly demand from Al- 
mighty God for their satisfaction in the shape 
of inspiration, is enough to guide them in the 
way of sound sensible believing, and of holy 
living. And it is not very extravagant praise 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 85 

to say, that the Bible as it is is abundantly 
sufficient for these things. But, unfortunately, 
the directors themselves stand most in need of 
the counsel just suggested; for the old tra- 
ditional view has for sometime been slipping 
away from the hold of the members of our 
Churches whom we denominate " the laity " ; 
this fatal objection to the conceit being obvious 
to "unlettered" readers of the Bible, that 
neither Jesus nor His Apostles attach any im- 
portance to mere words in their citations from 
the Old Testament Scriptures. It sufficed for 
them to give their hearers or readers the sense 
of this or the other passage they had occasion 
to quote from Moses or the Prophets. 

But, dismissing the question of verbal in- 
spiration, I proceed to submit objections to 
other orthodox views of the Bible, or of 
the Biblical writers. The presumption has pre- 
vailed that these writers were all equally in- 
spired ; and that all which came from them was 
alike inspired ; so that wherever we may dip 
into the Bible we are sure to come upon utter- 
ances in the highest sense Divine and infallible. 
But these assumptions are even ludicrously 
silly. There has been an evolution in the 
method of Divine revelations to mankind. 
Light from Heaven did not come in full flood 
at first : it increased from dawn to day ; such 



86 ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

progress being traceable in the Becord that we 
have of successive revelations. It were there- 
fore foolish to claim that the Spiritual light 
vouchsafed to Moses, is equal to that which 
shone " in the face of Jesus Christ " ; or that 
all the sayings attributed to Solomon, or to 
Psalmists, in the Old Testament, are of equal 
truth and authority with the sayings of St. John, 
or of St. Paul. Yet this claim is practically 
preferred by many of our preachers, as it is by 
multitudes of their disciples, as they plunge at 
random into the Bible; bringing out of it 
whatever may seem to suit them, or whatever 
may seem to support the dogma they are ad- 
vocating ; and all without question as to the 
real pertinency or the essential authority of 
the thing cited. Many sayings of the ancient 
Scriptures, and many customs, religious and 
political, which they enjoin, have been ren- 
dered obsolete for Christian people by the 
coming of Jesus Christ. This ought to be 
clear, even to children in our Sunday-schools ; 
since a considerable portion of Christ's Sermon 
on the Mount, as we call it, is occupied in 
correcting the invalidated teachings of "the 
ancients " ; among whom the traditional Moses 
is to be counted. While as to customs or in- 
stitutions, those of us most given to swearing 
by the letter of Scripture, will not contend 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 87 

that human slavery and a plurality of wives 
ought to have been continued, because they 
were allowed by Jewish lawgivers and priests 
under alleged sanctions from Heaven. The 
popular religious view of this matter is blindly 
indiscriminating. The Song of Solomon is 
not of equal value with the Gospel of St. John, 
nor the Chronicles with the Acts of the 
Apostles. Truth as it is in Moses, or in the 
Prophets, must be judged by " truth as it is in 
Jesus." The Bible is not all of a piece. It is 
really humiliating that one should have oc- 
casion to emphasize so plain and obvious a 
truth to-day. But so it is. We Protestants 
have had the reputation of being readers and 
students of the Bible beyond all other religion- 
ists ; but much of the reading has been dull, 
mechanical, or merely routine reading ; with a 
latent assumption in the minds of most readers,, 
that what was read was equally true and Di- 
vine ; whether from the book of Judges, with 
its savage manners and morals ; or from the 
Gospel according to St. Luke, with its story of 
the good Samaritan and its parable of the 
Prodigal Son. The theory that all Scripture 
is equally inspired, and of equal worth, is thus 
seen to be encumbered with difficulties which, 
being thoughtfully considered, ought to put 
its stoutest defenders out of all countenance. 



88 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

They will not, upon reflection, contend, I am 
sure, that all the sentiments uttered in the 
fivefold or sixfold controversy carried on 
through the book of Job are from the dicta- 
tion of Almighty God. The book of Psalms, 
again, is full of irreconcilable sentiments. 
Many of them are charged with the richest 
unction of the Spirit ; but others of them are 
atrociously inhuman. At many of them de- 
vout-minded men and women shudder, often, 
as they hear them read out in our Churches. 
We have elaborate apologies in abundance for 
the "vindictive" Psalms; but they are all 
wasted. When the best apologetic arts have 
been tried, the vindictiveness — the almost fiend- 
ish vindictiveness, in some instances — remains. 
The unwelcome truth is clear, that men 
speaking in the name of God could in those 
days, as they can in these, get angry with 
their adversaries, invoking the most terrible 
calamities upon them ; just as godly men have 
burned adversaries in crowds for the honor of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is vain, I sub- 
mit, it is blasphemous, to say that all these ex- 
plosions of a cruel anger were inspired by the 
Spirit whose "fruits are love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity " (Gala- 
tians v. 22, 23). The varying and contra- 
dictory moods of mind, moreover, which we 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 89 

find reflected in the book of Ecclesiastes, can- 
not all be ascribed to the one source of un- 
mixed and immutable Truth. 

No : the Bible is not all of one piece. Those 
of us who hold that it is, are more densely su- 
perstitious in our estimate of Sacred Scriptures 
than the ancient Jewish Eabbis were ; for they 
had their three grades of authority, at least, 
which they claimed for their Sacred Books ; or 
their three degrees of inspiration. The highest 
place in their regard was occupied by the Law, 
or the five books of Moses ; the next, lower, by 
the Prophets; the next, and lowest, by The 
"Writings, or Holy Writings ; (Hagiographa) 
most of the Rabbis ascribing a very uncer- 
tain amount of inspiration to these. But our 
orthodox Christian teachers, in their uncrit- 
ical, clumsy estimates of the Scriptures, have 
grouped all the books, and all the writers, in 
one category of importance ; to the confusion of 
many of their disciples, and to the very serious 
damage of the reputation of the Bible. One 
might have supposed, that some distinctive 
position would have been assigned by these 
teachers to Incarnate Wisdom. But nay : the 
Lord Jesus would seem to be no more to them 
than the man who maunders over the vanities 
of life in Ecclesiastes, or than the man who 
writes an epithalamium on the marriage of 



90 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

Solomon to a heathen princess. (Psalm 45.) 
But more, along this line. The person in- 
spired — this or the other of the sacred writers — 
is not always and uniformly inspired. Among 
men who have been so " moved by the Holy 
Ghost," we must surely count St. Paul ; yet he 
himself tells us that he sometimes spake of or 
from himself having no commandment from 
the Lord (1 Cor. vii. 6, 12); while, without 
such assurance, we can clearly perceive in 
certain passages of his Epistles that he is so 
speaking from himself — as in the weaving of 
that curious allegory about Abraham and 
Hagar, and the " two covenants " ; where Paul 
manifestly falls into Kabbinizing, in a literary 
sense, of the most approved kind in the schools 
of the Scribes. Peter, again, in some respects 
the very chief of the Apostles, was not always 
constrained by Divine influence. He certainly 
was so constrained, in the main, when he wrote 
his letter to his brother Israelites of the Dis- 
persion ; but he certainly was not, when play- 
ing the Jew among " those of the circumcision," 
and the Christian among those who had re- 
nounced, and who denounced, circumcision — 
for which double dealing Paul rebuked him 
"to the face" (Galatians ii. 11-16). In 
which case, in this unhappy rencontre between 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 91 

the two Apostles, not both of them, surely 
could have been inspired by the good Spirit. 

But are we not expressly told, some one of 
my readers may ask, that "all Scripture is 
given by inspiration of God " ? We are ; ac- 
cording to an inexact rendering of certain 
words of St. Paul in his second letter to 
Timothy, iii. 16. Correctly construed, how- 
ever the Apostle does not assert in the passage 
that all, or every, Scripture is inspired of God ; 
but that every Scripture so inspired is also 
" useful for doctrine ', for reproof for correc- 
tion, for discipline unto righteousness." Even 
the very careful, and cautious, and abundantly 
competent Bishop Ellicott so renders. But 
even taken as our orthodox Scribes have been 
wont to take it, the passage could not be 
brought forward to guarantee the inspiration 
of the New Testament ; since the Book was not 
written, or " published," at the time St. Paul 
wrote his letter to Timothy. 

But it may be yet farther complained, that 
the old conventional view of Inspiration is a 
great deal too narrow. It is too narrow in re- 
spect of time, and it is too narrow in respect 
of space. It confines the enlightening and 
hallowing work of the Holy Spirit to certain 
periods of religious history ; long since passed, 
and of very limited lengths compared with re- 



92 ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

ligious history as a whole. Men have pre- 
sumed to assign beginnings and endings to 
the Spirit's work ; in the sphere of Kevelation, 
at least. It began with Abraham, say they ; 
and ended — when? With Malachi? or with 
Ezra ? or with the men of the Great Syna- 
gogue ? " Yes," says the Biblically orthodox 
Jew, " with one or other of these." " But no," 
says the Biblically orthodox Christian ; " the 
Spirit's enlightening work then ended for 
awhile • but it began again in the ministry of 
John the Baptist. Nay, earlier : at the birth 
of the Divine Infant. And it ended again — 
when? At the death of the latest lingerer 
here of Christ's Apostles ? or with the close of 
the canon of New Testament writings ? Let 
us hope not. Let us hope that not one of 
these guesses is correct. Let us rather say, 
that ever since there have been creatures with 
hearts and consciences in them on this globe, 
there has been a Divine Spirit at work upon 
such hearts and consciences ; and that this 
Spirit will continue His work, without suspense, 
as long as the globe shall be tenanted with 
such creatures. Something of this faith would 
seem to have possession of the Christian world 
to-day ; since we hear crowds of people in tem- 
ples praying for, and singing about, a living 
Holy Spirit ; but when the preacher comes to 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 93 

talk about the Bible, one might infer that the 
mission of the Spirit to the world had been 
closed somewhere about the middle of the 
Fourth Century ; all the inspiration available 
to men since that time being bound up in 
Books ! Yet the preacher's Bible speaks of 
Christian disciples having "an unction," an 
annointing, " from the Holy One " ; and of a 
Spirit that should guide its subjects " into all 
truth " ; and of epistles " written, not with 
ink, but with the Spirit of the living God ; 
not upon tables of stone, but upon fleshly 
tables of the heart " (2 Cor. iii. 3). Let it not 
be suspected for a moment that I am here dis- 
paraging Book-revelations. Mi) yhoiro. I am 
simply trying to support the charge I just now 
made, that the conventional religious view of 
this question of Inspiration is altogether too 
contracted, too unpliant : to show that there 
was an inspiration going before the formula- 
tion of "canons," and which has continued to 
move men to high and holy thoughts and 
aims ever since the canons were " closed." I 
cherish the conceit, myself, that the world is 
in possession of sundry inspired books written 
this side of the dark ages; but none of 
them, probably, equally inspired touching 
God, and the human soul, and religion, and 
righteousness, and the life to come, with the 



94 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

writings of Hebrew prophets, or of Christian 
Apostles. 

But the conventional view is too narrow, 
also, in respect of space. The inspiring Spirit 
moved men within the confines of Judaism, as 
it afterward moved men within the confines of 
Christendom ; but not elsewhere, say our con- 
ventionalists. Moses, David, Isaiah, John, 
Paul, were inspired, say they; but Socrates, 
Sakya-muni, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Shakes- 
peare, were not inspired. But, accepting this 
narrow view of the Divine Spirit's operation 
in the world of moral intelligence and feeling, 
in what estimate are we to hold the lofty wis- 
dom and the pure goodness which we revere 
in men who lived beyond the limits within 
which our orthodox teaching confines the gifts 
of Inspiration ? Whence words like these ? 
are they from heaven, or of men ? — " A sacred 
Spirit dwells within us; the observer and 
guardian of all our evil and our good." 
"When the intellect is pure as well as the 
heart, to it the region of the Deity becomes 
visible." " God is near you, is with you, is 
within you." "Be self-denying, but do not 
boast of it : keep a watch upon yourself as 
your own most dangerous enemy. Do not 
plume yourself upon intellectual knowledge, 
which is in itself quite valueless, but upon a 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 95 

consistent nobleness. Never relax your ef- 
forts, but aim at perfection." "Bury my 
body as you please, but do not mourn as if 
you were burying Socrates. Think of me, 
rather, as gone to be with the wise and good ; 
and with God, the fountain of all wisdom and 
goodness." 1 These voices come to us from out 
the old heathen world ; but, judging them by 
their spirit and contents, they are as worthy 
to be counted divine as some of the sayings to 
be found in the book of " Canticles." " Eare 
flowers from the garden of Nature," evangeli- 
cal sentiment calls these wise and devout ut- 
terances ; but we may be bold to say of them, 
without irreverence, — " All these worketh that 
one and the self -same Spirit ; dividing to every 
man severally as He will." For St. Paul him- 
self places precisely such an estimate upon 
certain utterances of Pagan wisdom which he 
cites. From his Helenistic training and associ- 
ations at Tarsus, he had become acquainted 
with Greek writers, it would seem; which 
knowledge he does not disdain to use as a 
Christian Missionary, of which fact the record 
of his visit to Athens presents a striking in- 
stance. In the conduct of his great argument 
on Mars Hill, he accordingly quotes a line 
from the poet Aratus in support of the doctrine 
1 See Conway's "Sacred Authology " j passim. 



96 ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

of the universal Fatherhood of God, for which 
he was contending. (Acts xvii. 28.) In his 
First Epistle to the Corinthians again, he gives 
us, approvingly, a sentiment from Menander : 
— " Evil communications corrupt good man- 
ners " ; while in his letter to Titus, (i. 12) he 
refers to Epimenides as a "prophet." Thus, 
words and sentiments from heathen authors 
have become part of what we hold to be su- 
premely inspired Scripture, and are themselves 
therefore inspired ; and that not in virtue of 
their being 'in the New Testament. The in- 
spiration must have been in the words when 
they came from their Pagan authors: it did 
not come into them in the process of transcrip- 
tion, surely. 

"We must therefore enlarge our conception 
of the sphere and function of Inspiration ; and 
that under requirement of Bible authority and 
precedent. St. Paul being judge, other men 
than Hebrew prophets and Christian apostles 
have been c moved by the Holy Ghost ' to the 
utterance of divine and everlasting truth. Says 
Canon Farrar, in his admirable little book on 
Seekers after God — ' God has spoken to men 
noXufiepu)$ xai 7toAuTp67za>s ; at sundry times and in 
divers manners, with a richly variegated wis- 
dom. Sometimes He has taught truth by the 
voice of Hebrew prophets ; sometimes by the 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 97 

voice of Pagan philosophers ; and all His voices 
demand our listening ear. If it was given to 
the Jew to speak with diviner insight and in- 
tenser power, it was given to the Gentile, also, 
to speak at times with a large and lofty utter- 
ance ; and we may learn truth from men of 
alien lips and another tongue.' Doubtless, 
the highest and best results of the Spirit's 
work in and over men's minds and hearts have 
been gathered up, by a law of ' natural selec- 
tion,' so to speak, into the Volume which we 
therefore hold to be inspired xazi^ox^v. Such 
honor cannot be claimed for it exclusively, 
however, but only as to excellence of degree. 
The Divine Father has been in living contact 
with men through other avenues of intercourse 
than book-revelations, and far beyond the lim- 
its of the Jewish and Christian Churches. The 
light supernal has, no doubt, shone most clearly, 
in and through them ; but human reason, too, 
has been a i candle of the Lord ' ; the conscience 
has been a prophetic voice in the moral con- 
duct of life ; men ' doing by nature ' the works 
of a law which they knew not otherwise than 
as written in their hearts. These, also, are 
among the ' fruits of the Spirit ' ; with all that 
is true and wholesome in art, in literature, in 
social order, — in civilization, in a word." l For 
1 "North American Review," Sept. 1884. 



98 ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

the artist, too, is an inspired man, according 
to our Bible. (Exodus xxxi. 1, 2, 3) And if the 
artist, every other man endowed with any 
"good and perfect gift." 

On these accounts the popular conception of 
the range of the Holy Spirit's inspiration in 
and over men, must be declared to be too nar- 
row. The prevailing Bibliolatry of Christen- 
dom resents every suggestion of an extension 
of the range, however. The time was, when 
great leaders and teachers in the Christian 
Church — such men as Justin and the Alexan- 
drian Clement, notably — could speak of saints 
and sages of Pagan nations as having been 
illumined by "the true light which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world " / while 
Luther might exercise his right of discrimina- 
tion between the pure "Word of God and parts 
of the Bible which he deemed of inferior value, 
and yet continue in credit with the orthodoxy 
of his time, and of the times since his day; 
but no man may be thus daring to-day, with- 
out exposing himself to the fiercest fires of 
ecclesiastical hate and persecution. Now, all 
this is passing strange, considering the im- 
mense advances which culture has made within 
a hundred years ; the assumption being very 
generally entertained that culture must needs 
have a broadening, liberalizing effect upon 



ON INSPIEATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 99 

men's minds, in every sphere of thought. The 
assumption is well-founded and just, even as 
appertaining to the sphere of theological think- 
ing; but the liberalizing effect of culture in 
this sphere, seems to be almost wholly con- 
fined to the students and scholars in and about 
the Churches. These men know well enough, 
of course, that investigation and scholarship 
have made another thing of the Bible from 
what it was to people who used to assume that 
the Book had somehow come directly down 
from Heaven, complete and perfect down to 
every punctuation point ; but this innocent 
notion has been but slightly disturbed, I sus- 
pect, in its hold upon the rank and file of 
church members. 

It has thus come to pass that we have to-day 
two sets of credenda held, or tenable, in the 
religious world of our time : one set for the 
esoteric few ; and the other, for the exoteric 
many. And this condition of things is taken to 
be natural, and necessary. The preachers, very 
generally, and nearly all our Sunday-school 
teachers, are inculcating one set of credenda, 
and our great Christian Scholars another; a 
state of things which I look upon as not only 
anomalous, but full of danger to the reputation 
and vigor of Christ's religion. For when those 
who have sat meekly under the old traditional 



100 ON INSPIKATTON AND INFALLIBILITY. 

teaching come to read and think for themselves, 
many of them discover that much of what they 
have been taught won't bear scrutinizing ; and 
so, having no firm ground beneath their faith 
in the Bible when their belief in the untrust- 
worthy things in the Book has been shaken, 
they, or many of them, fall away from Beli- 
gion into one or other of our Infidelities ; silent 
or declamatory as temperament may dispose. 

But while our orthodox notion of Biblical 
inspiration is thus seen to be, on the one hand, 
too narrow, it is, on the other, a great deal 
too wide ; in that it carries with it an assump- 
tion of an absolute infallibility ; which apper- 
tains, it is alleged, to every word and act of 
the writers of our Sacred Books. And here 
again we marvel, more than before, how such 
an assumption could ever have found accept- 
ance with readers of the Scriptures of any dis- 
cernment; especially in the later Christian 
ages. The position is maintained to-day, how- 
ever, in the face of the exposures that we have 
of the unsound science to be found in Scrip- 
ture, and of chronological confusions, and of 
unreliable legendary narratives, which a de- 
vout Christian Scholarship has pointed out to 
us, or has certified for us ; — in the face of 
these things we are still assured, that the sal- 
vation of our souls depends upon our believing 



ON INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 101 

in the unimpeachable veracity and infallibility 
of every syllable of the Old and New Testa- 
ments ! Still is the alarmed exclamation of 
John Wesley echoed in our ears, or exclama- 
tions equally insensate, — " If we abandon belief 
in witchcraft, we might as well give up the 
Bible " : — a very foolish saying of a very wise 
man. It is these weak, fanatical, imbecile 
things from the professional friends of the 
Bible, that are most effectually undermining 
its credit and influence among the people to- 
day. "And one shall say unto him, What 
are these wounds in thine hands ? Then he 
shall answer, Those with which I was wounded 
in the house of my friends " (Zech. xiii. 6). 
That faith in Scriptures and in Churches has 
survived the follies and offences perpetrated 
through long centuries by their "friends," 
argues, to my mind, that there is something 
ineradicably good and Divine in Scriptures 
and in Churches ; that there is in human na- 
ture a constitutional need of what Religion is 
supposed to do for men ; — need of light to 
guide them on their way to the grave, and of 
grace to help them in their times of trouble. 
Otherwise, faith in Religion had surely been 
dissipated, or changed into scorn, long ere this. 
Yet will it seem to some of my readers, I 
suspect, that I have myself been occupied thus 



102 OK INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

far in this Essay in the work of undermining 
the credit of Holy Scripture. I am willing to 
risk the imputation, however ; relying upon 
the reader's ability to perceive, that I have 
been seriously intent upon establishing confi- 
dence in all the essential facts and doctrines 
of Scripture ; by clearing out of the way of 
the inquirer into the Bible's claims to respect 
and reverence, certain needless hindrances ; so 
revealing, or leaving to be discovered, firmer 
footing for faith in " things which cannot be 
shaken." I have been simply counselling — 
putting my aim otherwise — that the Bible 
shall be read and interpreted with an honest 
and a duly enlightened discrimination ; that 
sayings or sentiments that have come down to 
us from ignorant and superstitious ages, shall 
not be counted Divine and eternally true 
merely because they are found in a certain 
Record of those ages ; that whatever may be 
discovered in the Book that a progressive 
knowledge, or a progressive spiritual insight 
and sensibility, has discredited, shall not be 
imposed upon men as inspired by a Spirit 
of truth and holiness ; that deeds which are 
counted criminal in men, shall not be imputed 
to the wise and ever-righteous God at the re- 
quirement of any merely pious conceit; that 
whatever in Books or in Churches, in brief, is 



ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 103 

found to be contrary to " the mind that was 
in Christ," shall on that account be dismissed 
from among the things which a Christian man 
"ought to know and believe to his soul's 
health ; " leaving opinion free to play about 
such matters, and to make of them what it 
can. These are the demands I have made, ex- 
pressly or by implication, in the conduct of 
this discussion ; nor are they very threatening, 
I take it, to faith in Divine Eevelations. All 
of them being conceded, the Bible's claims to 
our veneration and love would remain what 
they were. Nay : the " wood, hay, and stub- 
ble " that have gathered about the foundations 
of God's Truth in the course of ages being re- 
moved, the impregnability of the foundations 
themselves would become the more manifest. 
Not a single moral commandment of the Al- 
mighty would be thus invalidated ; not a pre- 
cept of the Divine Directory would be thus 
deprived of its virtue; not one of its pre- 
cious promises would be bereft of its comfort 
for the Christian heart. The Bible would re- 
main what it was, essentially. All the great 
solid arguments which we now bring to the 
vindication of the inspiration and authority of 
Holy Scripture, would not only be as available 
then as now ; but they would be allegeable 
with a double force, when we should be free 



104 OlST INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 

from all calls to defend the indefensible. The 
submitting of any such arguments, at length, 
would be out of place here. Such kind of 
work did not fall within the scope of my in- 
tention, at least, on entering upon my present 
task. But let no light-minded person con- 
clude, that belief in the Bible's inspiration 
and authority is to be looked for only in 
ignorant, credulous people to-day. Such con- 
ceits are widely abroad just now, but they 
are intolerably stupid. Christian priests and 
preachers have been largely instrumental in 
giving them currency, however. 

Is it not time we had wholly done with this 
clumsy and mischievous handling of the Bible 
— so affording less occasion to unbelievers to 
blaspheme? Is it not about time that we 
ceased from preferring claims in behalf of the 
Book which it never prefers itself ; laying up 
confusion for ourselves when the claims are 
discredited ; as we have found so often ? Is it 
not time that we should cease from making 
foolish and impertinent demands upon God's 
Word? and from reading into it our own 
groundless imaginings, or those of our theolog- 
ical party ? Let us cease, also, from all jeal- 
ousy of Criticism; allowing the largest and 
most searching inquiry into the origin and 
character of our Sacred Books ; never fearing 



ON INSPIKATION AND INFALLIBILITY. 105 

that the Gospel of Jesus Christ may be thereby 
imperilled. Traditional views of the Bible 
may have to yield to the demands of a larger 
knowledge than our theological forefathers 
had attained to ; but the Church has made 
many such concessions already, without serious 
shock to the essentials of its Faith. The earth 
is no longer the centre of the universe, but 
Christ is still the centre of the world's dearest 
affections and hopes. God's Truth was not 
given to men to satisfy the curious, or to 
silence the caviller, or to meet all the require- 
ments of the critic. Going to the Holy Book 
with such expectations in us, we shall probably 
come away disappointed. No : the Scriptures 
were given us for "instruction in righteous- 
ness / that the man of God may oe thoroughly 
furnished unto all good worTcs." Taking our 
stand on this ground, accepting the Bible as 
a guide to Christian believing and living, we 
may live at peace 'mid all the intellectual 
tumult of the time. 



IT. 
ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 



107 



IV. 
ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 



" Who hnoweth whether the spirit of man 
goeth upward, or whether the spirit of the beast 
goeth downward to the earth f " is a question 
traditionally ascribed to Solomon ; (Eccle- 
siastes iii. 21). 1 " Spirit " being credited to 
beasts by this Hebrew " wise man," the reader 
will note ; which we moderns are inclined to 
do more and more, as we learn more and more 
of the higher orders of the animal kingdom. 

The man who put the double question I am 
for the moment dealing with, had obviously 
no positive hope of a future beyond death for 
either beast or man. Both might go " down- 
ward to the earth " ; which, to him, would be 
the end of both, we must infer. The going 
" upward " does seem to hint, however, at the 
possible existence of another state of being for 
man, on his passing out of this. Meanwhile 
this "Koheleth" — Preacher, Teacher, Wise 

1 No Biblical Scholar of our own time, however, holds 
that the Book of Ecclesiastes was written by the son and 
successor of David. 

The translation is that of the "Revised Version." 

109 



110 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

Man — is in a state of sore perplexity ; inclining 
at one time to yield to the suggestion that the 
end of man is in nowise better than that of 
the brute, since " both go to the same place," as 
he goes on to tell us. But he seems to have 
emerged out of this confusion of thought and 
feeling, in part, at least ; finally summing up 
the matter thus : — " Fear God, and keep His 
commandments ; for this is the whole duty of 
man." 

Yet is there nothing very hopeful as to a 
future life in this. Our " wise man " tells us 
to be true to all the relations and obligations 
of the present; which is a good "working 
creed " ; a creed in which men are more and 
more inclined to take refuge, I suspect, 'mid 
the darkling doubts of our time ; but a creed 
of very little service to the man who persists 
in pushing the inquiry, — " Is all this doing of 
duty here to have any issues after death?" 
"Morality, the keeping of God's command- 
ments, I acknowledge to be a substantial 
good," such a man might go on to say ; " hold- 
ing as I do, that whether men are to survive 
the grave or not, they are bound to do right, 
here and now, apart from all motives looking 
to another world for reward ; the doing good 
only ' for the sake of eternal happiness ' being 
a base principle of action, to my own moral 



ON THE RACKING DOUBT. Ill 

apprehension." And the sentiment is just. It 
is a reckless thing to say, as some Christian 
teachers have said, in effect, that but for the 
fear of hell and the hope of heaven, they 
would make the best of this world upon any 
terms ; even terms that might now be counted 
dishonorable. 

Few men are satisfied, however, with the 
notion that this world is a place for work and 
pleasure solely ; or with the philosophy which 
tells us to be content with the wages and the 
pastime we get here, and to lie down at life's 
close with no craving for anything beyond. To 
most of us, spite of our modern Epicureanisms, 
the old questions will recur, as we forecast the 
future — " What am I ? Whither am I going, 
if anywhere beyond the limit of time so rap- 
idly closing in upon me ? Is the break with 
life to be final for me, when the pulse shall 
cease to beat? I fear it is; since so many 
learned tongues are telling me that so it is to 
be, for me, and for all; Science having re- 
solved the doubt that plagued Solomon, as I 
am assured ; in having proved that the old or- 
thodox distinction between man and the brute 
was merely imaginary, or that the only dif- 
ference between them is simply in the com- 
plexity of the cranial organization; the 
'spirit,' or breath, which animates both, 



112 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

being destined to evaporate into the common 
air about us when the end for each shall 
come." 

But Science has proved no such thing. 
Whether or not a better destiny be in reserve 
for man than for the brute hereafter, he is 
certainly in a more hopeful condition than the 
mere animal, for the time, or in the state, now 
present. In that he is capable of a progressive 
education^ for instance. 

11 Brutes soon their zenith gain : their little all 
Flows in at once. . . . Were man to live 
A thousand years, the patriarch pupil would 
Be learning still ; and, dying, leave his lesson 
half unlearned." 

Even so ; men of the best and most thor- 
oughly developed faculties, and of the widest 
and highest attainments, go forth out of 
this world with "germs of power in them 
which the influences of time have scarcely 
quickened into life " ; and with aspirations 
after a knowledge of things of which they had 
been dreaming through all their career upon 
earth. But the brute has no intellectual germs 
to be further developed, here or hereafter, that 
we can detect. For the mere animal there are 
no arrested lines of inquiry to be taken up 
again after death, should opportunity be af- 
forded. Let not the reader understand me 



ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 113 

as saying here, that the lower animals are 
wholly void of intelligence. "We know better. 
We always did ; but we disguised the fact by 
calling intelligence in creatures beneath us 
"instinct." What I mean to say is, that the 
merely animal intelligence is a fixed quantity, 
so to speak, not admitting of any very consid- 
erable increase or development. It is about 
to-day what it has been down from the farthest 
point in the past to which Natural History has 
carried its researches ; nor is there any good 
likelihood that it will ever be very much more 
than it is now. Animal intelligence works 
ever upon the same fixed lines, about; pro- 
ducing ever about the same results. But in 
respect of the human intelligence it is conspic- 
uously otherwise, as we all know. To its 
growth or expansion no conceivable limit can 
be assigned ; the human mind having in it a ca- 
pability of what may be deemed an endless de- 
velopment. On which ground one might pre- 
dict a future life for man, while denying it to 
the brute. 

To the support of which conclusion this 
familiar fact might be cited : viz, the illimita- 
ble and irrepressible aspirations to which the 
human mind is subject, of which we see little 
or nothing in the merely animal mind. Hence 
the stimulating discontent with their allotments 



114 ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 

or with their attainments observable in men, 
even in the best conditioned. Whatever a 
man may have of this world's good, he has ever 
a higher ideal before him, unless he be irre- 
deemably dull. He conceives of, and he longs 
for, probably, conditions more desirable than 
those about him, coveting a good more com- 
pletely satisfying than he has ever as yet 
known. 

"We love, aud we long with an infinite greed, 

For a love that will fill our deep longing in vain. 
The cup that we drink of is pleasant, indeed ; 
But it holds but a drop of the heavenly rain." 

Which inappeasable instinct has suggested 
the inference, that we are destined for a state 
of being in which the yearning shall be satis- 
fied. So have our spiritual instructors argued, 
at least. 

No conclusive force is claimed for these hints 
and inferences, as bearing upon the question 
discussed in this Essay; but something more 
remains to be said. 

" JSTo conclusive force is claimed, indeed ! " 
retorts the Agnostic. 1 "No, I should think 

1 This word was born, so to speak, only a few years ago. 
The occasion of its formal adoption into the dialect of Brit- 
ish philosophy, at least, was at a meeting of a number of 
English savants at Clapham, near London, in the year 1869; 
the word Agnostic being then suggested — by Mr. Huxley, 
it has been said — as a fitter and a fairer designation than 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 115 

not. They are simply of the sort that have 
mystified credulous people for ages: — mere 
gropings in the dark, attempts to explain the 
inexplicable, to get at a knowledge of the un- 
knowable, to make good at the bar of Reason 
doctrines that are beyond the reach of reason. 
Let, therefore, this beating of the old straw 
cease. Of any posthumous destiny for man we 
know nothing, nor did the wisest of our spe- 
cies in past ages know anything. It is vain, 
therefore, to betake one's self to prophets or 
oracles of any sort, in quest after a solution of 
the great enigma. "We know phenomena only. 
Or, more correctly, all our knowledge is of 
states of consciousness simply." Well; the 
protest is vigorously put ; yet might one make 
answer that " gropings in the dark " have often 
led to light. While it might be said further, 
to the credit of free thinking, that, as a matter 
of fact, no line of inquiry into the constitution, 
or processes, or sequences of things, has ever 

atheist, or infidel, of the men who refuse to accept the doc- 
trines of our orthodox religionisms ; such terms having 
gathered ahout them a certain amount of social odium, of 
which "freethinkers " don't deem themselves deserving. 
From that year — '69, therefore, the word Agnosticism has 
been made to do service as a mild and inoffensive substi- 
tute for the term infidelity. Men who reject doctrinal 
Christianity, are no longer to be called infidels, but are to 
be known and spoken of as Agnostics. And I for one, 
would cheerfully allow the substitute; the request for the 
change being, in my judgment, reasonable and fair. 



116 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

been arrested for long by any dictum of au- 
thority. Told that fuller knowledge was not 
to be found on the path of investigation they 
were pursuing, inquirers have surmised that 
the lack of knowledge might be only temporal ; 
and have gone on with their inquiries. And 
it were vain for the agnostic to expect that 
his dictum will prove a whit more effectual, in 
the way of silencing the "whence," "why," 
" whither," which each generation of men puts 
with unwaning eagerness, on attaining to in- 
tellectual puberty — our own not less eagerly 
than the generations that are gone. Spite of 
the very marked devotion to physical studies 
that has prevailed throughout the century 
just closing, questions of a psychological 
interest are as widely and as intensely 
pondered to-day, probably, as in any past 
period of intellectual history; all the more 
intensely from recent psychical researches of 
which the world has heard. With certainty 
may it be said, that a philosophy which rudely 
shuts the door in the face of inquirers into 
questions of such moment as the higher en- 
dowments of men, and their possibly everlast- 
ing destinies, saying " There is no light to be 
had here," will fail to win to itself a very wide 
and warm attachment in this our free-thinking 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 117 

age. For here, at least, Christian thinkers 
claim to be free thinkers. 

From all this it will be clear, I trust, that I 
myself cherish no enmity toward, or fear of, 
Agnosticism. Touching many things, powers, 
functions, seen and unseen, in the vast, mani- 
fold, mysterious whole of which we ourselves 
are parts, we are all agnostics. My objection 
to considerable parts of our theological " sys- 
tems " is, that they are a great deal too know- 
ing y theologians having been long accustomed 
to talk in a shockingly familiar way about 
what they nevertheless call " the deep things 
of God " ; as if all the secrets of the hidden 
world were naked and open to them. They 
can tell one all, or very much, about what 
they call " the counsels of eternity " ; as 
though they themselves had been present at 
the high council board, and had well under- 
stood all that was considered and decided 
there. They know, or they assume to know, 
also, all the underlying reasons of the things 
that have been, and that are, and that shall 
be ; with all the ultimate purposes of the vast 
scheme of Providence, which unrolls itself so 
slowly and so perplexingly in the process of 
the ages. The courageous theologian will 
even analyze the nature of the ineffable God- 
head for you ; actual specimens of which dar- 



118 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

ing work we have in the so-called " Athana- 
sian Creed," and in many of our treatises upon 
the doctrine of the Trinity. But all that sort 
of thing is intolerably offensive, to men of 
discernment and modest feeling; who know 
well the very limited range of the strongest 
intellectual faculties, in dealing with matters 
beyond the direct cognizance of the logical 
understanding. As to these things we are all, 
in large part, at least, agnostics, or ignorant 
ones. 

But are we quite and as inevitably ignorant 
of the higher truths of Religion, or are we as 
completely destitute of all good ground for 
belief in them — in the doctrine of a Future 
Life, for instance — as our agnostics would 
have it that we are ? " Yes," we are answered, 
with emphasis : — " Yes : we are all thus abso- 
lutely ignorant, the Christian sophist included, 
of what he calls ' the higher truths of religion.' 
"We know only phenomena ." Indeed ! we say 
on recovering breath ; adding, perhaps, the in- 
quiry : — And is the case — this whole contro- 
versy between materialism and spiritualism — 
to be thus easily and neatly disposed of ? And 
all by simply citing a vague or an unmeaning 
verbal formula ? But in that case, — all our 
knowledge being of phenomena only, that is, 
— how much of what Ave have hitherto been 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 119 

accustomed to call knowledge must be dis- 
missed from such high regard ! All the vast 
stores of history, for instance ; with all that 
world-wide travel tells us ; — of these we are 
no longer to be said to know anything. For 
though the incidents, events, transactions of 
which the historian or the traveler informs us 
may have been phenomena to him, they have 
certainly not been phenomena to men living 
in later ages ; or to men who were living at 
the time in other parts of the earth. They, 
therefore, cannot be said to have known such 
events or transactions. Yet have men for 
ages been under the delusion, that from pon- 
dering the pages of Thucydides, or Livy, or 
Hume, they have come to know something of 
what Greeks, or Eomans, or Englishmen act- 
ually said and did in those times. But let all 
this go. It is simply a question of using the 
word " know " with, or without, a special em- 
phasis. This very considerable thing may be 
here added, however, that in no other sense 
can we be said to know the agnostic's phe- 
nomena, than that in which we may be said 
to know history ; this knowing, and that, rest- 
ing on, or being got at, by faith. 

I should be willing, myself, to accept the 
agnostic's short, bold, blunt declaration — " We 
know only phenomena," provided it should be 



120 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

understood that all phenomena were to be in- 
cluded within the scope of the formula's mean- 
ing or intent ; not only objective, but subjective, 
phenomena : — thought, feeling, desire, will, in- 
tuition, the logical instinct, the faculty of gen- 
eralization — all mental phenomena, in brief. 
I should insist upon this stipulation for the 
purpose of precluding all possibility of its 
being concluded, that we know nothing be- 
yond impressions made upon the cognitive 
faculties by sensible things; a conclusion 
which the less cautious of our agnostic scribes 
tempt their readers to run away with, by the 
unqualified, headlong way in which they de- 
liver themselves of what they have to say. 
All that sense does not affirm, or that science 
does not demonstrate, say they, is to be rele- 
gated to the sphere of poetry, or sentiment, or 
faith, — for which agnostics have but small re- 
spect. It is all superlative nonsense, however. 
Yet will this jingling of verbal formulae still 
go on, probably, in college lecture-rooms, and 
in " halls of science." It would be very dis- 
orderly, but it might prove of service, should 
some one of the disciples rise in his place and 
say — "Sirs: suppose that, passing on from 
connoting appearances, we start in quest of 
realities; asking — Of what are appearances 
the appearances ? and — To what, if anything, 



ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 121 

do appearances appear ? " Such a disciple would 
be rebuked, of course ; and might be told, 
that such questions are out of place in the lec- 
ture-room of a teacher of Physical Science; 
the reminder being added, possibly, that 
it is for the Metaphysician to do what he can 
with such questions: as for Physicists, they 
no longer trouble themselves with "extinct 
follies." Yet would the neophyte who should 
be thus daring, be on a true intellectual scent : 
a scent which even the Physicist will have to 
follow, to get at the real meaning of his phe- 
nomena. 

But let all this go, I say again — all this talk 
as to sensible phenomena being the limit of all 
possible human knowledge — as being of very 
little consequence, one way or other. It is, in 
truth, of no consequence whatever ; as we may 
perceive very clearly on recurring to the altera 
nate formula offered us a little while ago by 
the agnostic. " All our knowledge is of states 
of consciousness" he then told us ; and to this 
all Eabbis eminent in the schools of agnosticism 
to-day agree ; which is a decided advance to- 
ward clearer thinking about this whole matter. 
All that I bargained for, then, or which I threat- 
ened to demand, should the discussion of the 
old formula be seriously entered upon, has been 
conceded. The field of debate has been very 



122 ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 

much narrowed. We have no longer two 
classes of phenomena to distract our attention 
— the objective and subjective. We have only 
one class to do with now — the subjective ; for 
all our knowledge is of states of consciousness, 
simply, and wholly; for the unquestioned 
adoption of which formula, all believers in 
what we call the " soul," and in the possibility 
of souls surviving death, may well be thank- 
ful. 

The appeal now lies to Consciousness, then ; 
or to the mind, soul, spirit: to its sense of 
Self ; to its susceptibilities, capabilities, and to 
its actual workings ; to thought, feeling, in- 
tuition ; to its reflections and anticipations ; to 
its instinctive discriminations; to its "cate- 
goric imperatives " ; to its shame for, and de- 
testation of, knowingly-done wrong. These 
are the phenomena we shall have to do 
with for awhile. And these we certainly 
know — using the word with the full pressure 
of the required emphasis upon it — and none 
other, properly speaking. 

Consciousness is an ultimate fact in human 
experience ; so simple and direct in its nature 
and witness that we cannot define it, as Sir 
William Hamilton remarks. I know that I 
know ; I know that I feel ; I know that I de- 
sire — that is all there is to be said about the 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 123 

matter. While the phenomena of conscious- 
ness are so uniform and of so unvarying a sig- 
nificance to all sane natures, as they have been 
among all civilized peoples in all ages, that we 
receive them, and swear by them, nemine con- 
tradicente. 

But in what way can the witness of con- 
sciousness help us to a rational and reliable 
belief in a future life ? For I am not here 
bent upon proving, in the sense of demon- 
strating, that men will live after death. We 
have no argumentative materials at command 
for the accomplishing of that task. The post- 
humous life of which we conceive, is beyond 
the apprehension of the senses — " Eye hath not 
seen " / and as to ghosts, we cannot bring them 
into court in the trial of this case. I aim at 
nothing more in this Essay, at least, than to 
make sufficient ground good for the resting of 
a belief upon it, that what we call the " ani- 
mating principle " in us, the life force, of 
which we are now conscious, may, not as- 
suredly will, survive the dissolution of the 
body ; so far meeting and refuting the dogmas 
of our Materialism. To such extent, or to- 
ward the attainment of this aim, the responses 
of Consciousness to our appeal will be found 
helpful, I anticipate. 

The brain is the organ of the mind, if it be 



124 ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 

still permitted us so to speak ; which organ the 
Craniologist dismembers, and proceeds to dis- 
tribute into a variety of quasi-independent 
organs, a special function being assigned to 
each; the matter filling this recess in the 
cranium being perpetually busy in producing 
the sentiment of awe ; the matter in another 
recess producing benevolent emotions ; while 
other matter so located shows a passion for de- 
structiveness ; still other "organs" showing 
pitif ulness ; and so on with other cranial pro- 
tuberances, or recesses; the brain, in its 
structure and functions, being thus seen to be 
manifold ; as interpreted by the Phrenologist. 
But Consciousness testifies that the mind is 
one, not many. Back of, or beneath, all di- 
versity of organs is the necessary Unity of the 
thinking, feeling, acting Agent. For it is the 
same Something which feels, and reasons, and 
which shapes conceptions of beauty ; which 
throbs with animal passion, and which is in- 
spired with sympathy and love. All these are 
faculties, affections, energies, not of the indi- 
vidual organs to which they are loosely ac- 
credited, but of the Ego ; of the Soul, of the 
Spirit, of the Man ; who owns the organs, so to 
speak ; and operates through them, as through 
the keys or stops of some musical instrument. 
The music is varied, but the Player is one. 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 125 

By few mental scientists is the cranial map- 
work of the Phrenologist accepted, however, as 
usually presented; but they, too, dismember 
the Mind, b j personifying its powers; labeling 
them as perception, reason, judgment, affection, 
desire, will; these capabilities being repre- 
sented by writers in this field, as severally do- 
ing or suffering this or the other thing ; — each 
on its own account, so to put the point. This 
is not meant of course, by the writers. It were 
well for readers to recollect themselves occa- 
sionally, however ; clearly defining the truth 
to their thoughts, that such a way of speaking 
of the mind's susceptibilities and activities is 
after the manner of the poet, rather than that 
of the philosopher. For it is not the judgment 
that judges, or desire that desires, or the will 
that wills ; but it is the one all-inclusive Mind, 
or Soul, that judges, or desires, or wills. Yet is 
the poetical way of speaking, even of these 
high serious matters, quite allowable ; nay, in- 
evitable. Only, we are to discriminate ; re- 
membering always, or recollecting occasion- 
ally, that all organs and functions are the 
organs and functions of the one Mind. 

We have thus come upon a conscious Unity, 
then, beneath the varieties of organ and of 
function appertaining to the human brain ; to 
which Unity all sensations report themselves, 



126 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

and by which they are interpreted and classi- 
fied. How the report is made, and how it is 
deciphered, and as to how an external form is 
translated into a mental image, and awakens 
mental emotion, — as to these things we know 
very little. We trace a sensation along an 
afferent nerve that is carrying it to the sen- 
sorium, till we lose sight of it, so to speak, 
'mid the convolutions of the sensory ganglia. 
But it does not then cease to he. Consciousness 
receives it; retaining it, usually, for awhile. 
But either at once, or at length, it, or a weaker 
reflex of it, is stored away in the archives of 
Memory for future recall; should occasion 
ever incite the mind to recollection of it. With- 
out a conscious Subject, however, there never 
could be a sensation, either to be recollected, 
or to be taken in. 

But on following another line of observation 
we come upon this same conscious Unity 
again. The atoms constituting our physical 
structure are in continual flux, we are told by 
our physiological authorities ; constituent ele- 
ments being incessantly cast off out of the 
structure, and others being continually taken 
up into it, to supply the voids so created ; the 
whole of our bodily organism, including the 
brain, of course, being renewed every seven 
years, or thereabouts. But the Ego, the Soul, 



. 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 127 

our true Self, remains absolutely unchanged 
through the whole process of transmutation ; 
retaining a cleanly cut sense of its Identity 
throughout. Now, in whatever this sense of 
identity may inhere, it certainly does not in- 
here, it may be confidently affirmed, in any 
collocation of material particles ; for how could 
such particles be continually dropping out of 
our bodily frame- work, the sense of our per- 
sonality remaining without the slightest varia- 
tion or abatement? "All human language, 
all human observation implies," says one of 
England's acutest writers — himself a "free- 
thinker," * " that the mind, the I, is a thing in 
itself, a fixed point in the midst of a world of 
change; of which world of change its own 
organs form a part. It is the same yesterday, 
to-day, and to-morrow. It was what it is when 
its organs were of a different shape, and con- 
sisted of different matter from their present 
shape and matter. While it will be what it is 
when they have gone through other changes. 
I do not say that this proves, but it surely 
suggests, it renders probable, the belief that 
this ultimate fact, this starting-point of all 
knowledge, thought, feeling, and language, 
this ' final inexplicability,' is independent of its 

1 James Fitzjames Stephen, Q. C, in " Liberty, Equality, 
and Fraternity," p. 296, Am. Ed. 



128 ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 

organs ; that it may have existed before they 
were collected out of the elements, and may 
continue to exist after they are dissolved into 
the elements." 

Spite of the perpetual flux of the atoms 
which constitute the instrument through which 
it usually acts, then, and spite of the variety of 
organs into which that instrument is dis- 
tributed, the Mind is one : permanently and 
immutably one. But it remains one, also, 
through all the transitory stages it passes 
through in the course of its unfolding and 
maturing. If our experiences ran through the 
mind like water through a water-wheel, leav- 
ing no abiding impressions behind it, the past 
of a man's life would be a blank. But it does 
not so run away. It leaves deposits behind it, 
so to speak, which become parts of a man's 
self ; so that all the past lives in the present, 
or the man, rather, lives in the past, in the 
present, and in the future : in the past by re- 
flection, in the present by experience, and in 
the future by anticipation. 

We are thoughtlessly familiar with the 
workings of Memory, or they might start a 
thousand curious questions in us very per- 
plexing to materialism. How are its rec- 
ords written and preserved ? On material 
tablets, and in material archives? Why, 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 129 

there is not room for them if the record ran 
round every particle in our physical constitu- 
tion. How, moreover, could one constituent 
atom hand on its inscription, on leaving its 
place in the human organism, to its successor ? 
If the Mind is only a congeries of material 
organs, — "secreting thought as the liver 
secretes bile" — however did it acquire its 
wonderful power of looking back, and of re- 
taining impressions made upon it in remotely 
by-gone times? Or how does it exercise its 
forward-looking capability ? Sense cannot 
take discriminating cognizance of things that 
have no existence except to faith, or to the 
imagination. But the Mind holds communion, 
familiarly and habitually, as we know, with 
experiences and associations of a far past 
through Memory. In hours of silent thought, 
all the senses being shut, the investiture of the 
body having seemingly fallen away from us, 
we relive our days and years ; incidents of our 
youth being as real to the eye of reflection, up 
to advanced years, as the incidents of the 
present passing hour. The unworthy deed, 
the malicious word, the selfish feeling, comes 
back to us, crimsoning the cheek with a blush 
of shame, or moistening the eye with peniten- 
tial tears, or smiting the conscience with a 
guilty fear, it may be. Or, if the word, deed, 



130 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

feeling, were true and good, filling the soul 
with a pleasant satisfaction when remembered ; 
all which are strange susceptibilities and 
powers to attribute to a collocation of material 
particles, I take it. 

But here I pass to considerations of an equal 
or even weightier significance in support of the 
thesis I am maintaining. Consciousness testi- 
fies to a capability of moral Freedom in men ; 
a claim which is practically acknowledged by 
all men, though professedly denied by some. 
I do not allege, or assume, that this freedom 
is absolute or unlimited in us. It is restrained 
or hedged in by conditions, internal and ex- 
ternal; freedom being of very limited possi- 
bility of range in some men, and of compar- 
atively wide possibility of range in others; 
but in all it is conditioned. "With endowment 
of the necessary faculties of mind, however, 
we are free to shape, not always to originate, 
our own purposes, and to follow our own 
preferences, within our own proper limits. 
Attempts have been made to refute this claim, 
or to deprive of all force arguments preferred 
in support of it. Mr. Tyndall, for instance, 
once told us, that there is an invariable rela- 
tion between physics and consciousness, so 
that, " given the state of the brain, the corre- 
sponding thought or feeling may be inferred. 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 131 

Or given the thought or feeling, and the corre- 
sponding state of the brain may be inferred " ; 
in which statement Christian philosophy finds 
nothing to object to ; since it only affirms the 
intimate connection which we know to exist 
between the mind and the instrument through 
which it ordinarily acts. Should any one be 
tempted, however, to conclude from the affir- 
mation that a certain disposition of brain 
molecules produces, properly speaking, states 
of consciousness which have inevitable issues 
in conduct ; and that therefore man is not free, 
being wholly under the inspiration and con- 
trol of molecular action, the eminent scientist 
will supply such an one with a correction, 
where he says : — " You cannot satisfy the hu- 
man understanding in its demand for logical 
continuity between molecular processes and 
the phenomena of consciousness. This is a 
rock on which materialism must inevitably 
split, whenever it pretends to be a complete 
philosophy of the human mind." * 

Others have alleged, again, that the mind, 
and therefore life, is under the irresistible 
coercion of Motives ; a motive being assumed 
to be a something which moves the Mind, as 
the word imports ; so moving the man to any 
line of action he may enter upon and follow ; 

1 "Fragments of Science," Introduction to Part II. 



132 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

all this being taken as an adequate basis for 
the inference, that men being so constrained, 
— constrained by motives which they them- 
selves do not invent, but to which they are 
wholly passive, as assumed — from all this it is 
argued that men are not accountable for their 
conduct, because not free to do what they 
would. But, in truth, a motive is simply a 
state of consciousness : an attitude of mind 
incited by some offer of gain or gratification, 
or by some other inducement to action ; the 
decision of the question as to whether the offer 
shall be accepted, or the inducement yielded 
to, remaining with the Mind itself j what we 
call the " stronger " motive, in our popular 
loose way of talking, being only known to be 
" stronger " after the Mind has decided to do 
this .with the offer, and not that. It is not 
true, therefore, to say that motives coerce the 
Mind. It would be nearer the truth, at least, 
to say that the Mind coerces motives. 

Still others have affirmed that character 
and conduct are decided by inheritances from 
progenitors, and by the pressure of environ- 
ment—using the word in a very wide sense — 
upon our nature ; specially in its early pliant 
stages of development; according to an old 
but now disused formula — " Man is the creature 
of circumstances." All possibility of moral 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 133 

freedom for man is thus excluded again, there- 
fore. 

All these, however, with the conceit of " an 
eternally impressed series of consequences," 
are ineffectual attempts to get round the truth 
to which consciousness and experience testify : 
the truth of the Mind's spontaneity, of its 
power to strike the balance between claims 
submitted to it ; which we see continually il- 
lustrated and confirmed, not by men of any 
particular school or creed only, but by men of 
all schools and creeds, in the free outflowing 
of their natures. Some men talk the talk of 
fatalism; but in pondering and fighting our 
way through the world we are all free men. 
If the Mind were not free to deliberate and to 
decide upon this or the other line of action, 
then could no sense or suspicion of accounta- 
bility ever arise within us in the use of its- 
powers and privileges ; nor any feeling of re- 
morse follow upon their abuse. But we have 
such a sense within us : such a feeling does 
follow wilful and deliberate wrongdoing. 
Man is morally free, then, within a varying 
circumference of action, or possibility of ac- 
tion ; or Consciousness lies. Certainly, no con- 
ceivable combination of material particles 
could ever result in any but a mechanical, and 
therefore non-accountable, activity. The as- 



134 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

sumptions of Materialism are here wholly at 
fault, then ; as by this time begins to be clear, 
I may conclude. 

But let the reader take into consideration 
another fact, or series of facts, in mental ex- 
periences, of like import to those I have al- 
ready adduced. The phenomena of " Uncon- 
scious Cerebration " suffice to show that the hu- 
man Mind can act, even now, independently 
of the bodily organism ; or, speaking more pre- 
cisely, can act without prompting by the senses. 
That may be deemed a daring saying ; but 
there is ample evidence to confirm its credibil- 
ity, if we only knew what the evidence meant, 
or what it implied. l I retire at night, wearied 
with wrestlings at an insolvable problem. 
But in the night-watches, when all our facul- 
ties are asleep, as we are wont to think, the 
Mind has gone on with the task and completed 
it ; the problem standing out to my apprehen- 
sion on waking in the morning, cleanly solved. 
Or I have a project before me of a journey, 
with business at the end that absorbs me in 
anticipation. "While I sit pondering my plans, 

1 " Experience furnishes us with no example of any series 
of states of consciousness, without this group of contingent 
sensations attached to it ; but it is as easy to imagine such 
a series of states without, as with, this accompaniment ; 
and we know of no reason in the nature of things against 
the possibility of its being so disjoined." John Stewart 
Mill, in his Essay on "Immortality." 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 135 

there is animated noisy intercourse going on 
all around me ; but to me it is all as if it were 
not. I am not in the world of my actual sur- 
roundings. I am far away from it all, in a 
world of my own : in a world which has no 
existence, as yet, except to faith ; in a world 
of the MinoVs own creating out of nothing ! 
The " molecular activities " have been all in 
full play the while, I am to suppose ; carrying 
reports to the sensorium of the noisy sayings 
and doings about me, but I have been wholly 
unaware of them ! It is all very strange, but 
such experiences are familiar. Yes : we are 
often looking with the eye when we do not 
see. The ear is often open when we do not 
hear. Every nerve may be in tune, and on 
full stretch, when we feel no sense of touch. 

To these hints the reader will probably be 
ready to respond approvingly, saying within' 
himself — "Yes; I have been aware of such 
things a hundred times in the course of my ex- 
perience." Even so. And the explanation we 
give of them in our common talk, is profoundly 
just and philosophic, I believe. We ascribe such 
failures of apprehension to mental pre-occupa- 
tion, or to what we call " absence of mind." 
Yes; that is the phrase which indicates the 
true account to be given of such phenomena. 
Just as the operator may be absent from the 



136 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

instrument when a message comes through a 
wire connecting two continents, perhaps, as a 
nerve connects the hand with the brain, such 
message remaining unread till the operator re- 
turns to his post ; even so may the apparatus 
of the senses carry a report to the seat of in- 
telligence, but it remains unread as long as 
the Mind is absent, or otherwise occupied. 
"While we have all had experiences of similar 
import, in dim, mysterious reminiscences of a 
life lived by us in some past period of time, or 
in some other state of being. Yes; there 
come to us, we know not how, we know not 
whence, strange 

"Mystic gleams, 
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams : 
Of something felt, like something here; 
Of something done we know not where ; 
Such as no language may declare." 

Yet is the author of " Intimations of Immor- 
tality " bold to " declare," adopting Plato's 
conceit, that these " gleams " are distant re- 
flections of a pre-earthly existence. 

11 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 

The soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar : 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness ; 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home." 



ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 137 

But what is the Something which works 
these wonders within us ? which sets all the 
known capabilities of matter at defiance? 
which ignores the limitations of Time and 
Space, making the past and the future present, 
and the non-existent actual ? That Something 
is personal ; for it calls itself " I." It is in- 
telligent ; for it writes Iliads, and elaborates 
Philosophies. It is free ; for it deliberates and 
chooses; accepting this, and rejecting that. 
It is moral ; for it condemns wrong, even its 
own wrong, and approves right. It is devout ; 
for it worships. 

Aye ; says the unmitigated Materialist, but 
all these are the results of the inter-activities 
of material molecules, simply. Well ; if they 
are, we shall have to discharge the old verbal 
dualism from further service ; and learn to 
speak of Mind in terms of Matter, or of Mat- 
ter in terms of Mind. But a new terminol- 
ogy merely would add nothing to the lucid- 
ness of men's thinking, or of teaching; but 
rather confusion. We should simply have 
another definition added to our many defini- 
tions which don't define. But should it become 
everywhere accepted, and by all men, that 
Matter is all of Nature, including Man, we 
should still have to speak of some Matter, or 
of some forms of Matter, as conscious, and of 



138 ON THE RACKING DOUBT. 

other forms as non-conscious ; and thus we 
should really have back the old dualism which 
Materialism thought to have discarded. While 
it would still be open to the man who believes 
that we may live after death to say, that as 
some Matter lives, and feels, and thinks now, 
so would there be nothing in the adoption of a 
new nomenclature for old phenomena, to pre- 
clude the expectation that the conscious part 
or form of Matter might go on living and feel- 
ing and thinking when the ^<9^-conscious forms 
of Matter are dissolved into dust. For con- 
sciousness is force, — the only force we really 
know, — and force, we are told, never dies. 

The intellectual heavens have been threaten- 
ing to such expectations for some time. The 
profounder researches that have been prose- 
cuted within half a century in the fields of 
comparative anatomy and physiology, espe- 
cially as to brain structure and function ; " the 
acknowledged presence and power of the im- 
ponderable forces in mental phenomena ; — the 
pathology of the mind having become almost 
wholly merged in that of the body ; the grow- 
ing conception of Nature as ordered and ruled 
in all her departments by fixed or uniformly 
operating laws " ; — all these theories and con- 
clusions have, in effect, been the allies of the 
Schools which deny that there is any good 



ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 139 

ground discoverable, or as yet discovered, at 
least, on which to rest a hope of immortality 
for man. 

Yet are the principles and canons of spir- 
itual philosophy as impregnable to-day as ever 
they were. We know a little more than our 
forefathers knew as to the forms and func- 
tions of material organisms, but we are no 
nearer than they were to the identification of 
Mind with Matter. We are told of the " high 
charge of nervous power " in certain human 
constitutions, of "waves of emotion from 
cerebral centres," of the eminently "glandu- 
lar character of the tender affections " ; from 
all which one might be tempted to conclude, 
that mind is fast being reduced to physiolog- 
ical function. " But, in truth, we are just as 
far from discovering the real Thinker and 
Actor in all this commotion of nerves and 
brain as we were before. Nay ; if we could 
render the human body transparent, and could 
thus watch all that goes on within it, what we 
should see would not be sensation, thought, 
affection, but some sort of movement, merely, 
among the constitutional particles of our bodily 
structure " ; which movement of molecules 
were no more mind, however, than the revolu- 
tion of a wheel is the steam that propels it. 1 

1 Much of the language, and some of the illustrations of 



140 ON THE BACKING DOUBT. 

The talk of the Materialist about molecular 
groupings, or atomic activities, really explains 
nothing, therefore. The utmost that he can 
affirm is the uniform association of two classes 
of phenomena; not that the two classes are 
only one class, or that one class — the uncon- 
scious — is the cause of the phenomena of con- 
sciousness. A condition it may be, for the 
time now present, but not the cause. In the 
frank words of Mr. Tyndall, " the connection 
of soul and body is as insolvable in its present 
form, as it was in the pre-scientific ages." 

Our fears were futile, then. The Mind, Soul, 
Spirit, is not "a discredited myth." The 
" bundle of attributes " which we designate by 
one or other of these words, is antithetical to 
the " bundle of attributes " which we designate 
Matter. We cannot even dispense with the 
old terminology, therefore, as Mr. Huxley 
once told us that we might. Soul and Body 
are terms which represent essentially different 
"bundles of attributes," Mr. Tyndall being 
witness. It were verbal recklessness to say 
that we may fittingly use the one term for the 
other. 

It remains, then, that we may still avail 

this paragraph are Mr. Martineau's, I feel quite sure. But 
from which of his writings I got them, I cannot now say, 
or discover. 



ON THE HACKING DOUBT. 141 

ourselves of all the old lights which guided 
our forefathers to faith in God and Immortal- 
ity, and among them "the Light of the 
world." For if we are allowed, without 
caveat, to cite Socrates in witness to truth per- 
taining to " the life that now is," or to the life 
that is to be, we cannot consistently ignore 
the testimony of Jesus. 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS BETWEEN 
SCIENCE AND KELIGION. 



143 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS BETWEEN 
SCIENCE AND KELIGION. 



I prefer the word dissensions in this con- 
nection to the word antagonism, or to the 
word conflict, chiefly because it is a word of 
milder import. Prejudices may be incited by 
the use of epithets stronger than are required, 
in the discussion of questions which divide 
public sentiment. Quite sure am I, that mis- 
chief has been done by the loose way in which 
such words as conflict and antagonism have 
been bandied about of late, between men bent 
upon assaulting the Christian Faith, and the 
men who have set themselves to defend it. 1 
There is really very little mutually opposed 
feeling that deserves to be called antagonism, 

*The late Dr. J. W. Draper had a fondness for such 
verbal excesses ; a large part of the argument in his hook 
on " The Conflict between Religion and Science " being con- 
ducted upon the assumption, that the Christian Religion is 
responsible for all the follies and wrongs of Ecclesiasti- 
cisms. Mr. Tyndall, with his candor and love of accuracy, 
speaks, in a note to his Apology for the Belfast Address, of 
Dr. D.'s work as a description of the long-continued strug- 
gle between science and the Romish Church : — as some of my 
readers may have remarked. 

145 



146 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

between worthy representatives of the Science 
and the Eeligion of our own time, I am fain 
to hope ; but frequent occasion of dissension 
is no doubt encountered by the worthiest rep- 
resentatives of the two classes. How serious 
soever such differences may seem, however, 
they must spring, of course, from an imperfect 
or a confused conception of things, or from an 
unskilful handling of evidence ; not from any 
essential occasion of conflict in the Divine 
Cosmos, which, as ordained and ruled by one 
Mind, — for the writer assumes a Theistic posi- 
tion — must needs be at perfect agreement in 
its order and action ; though we may never be 
able to discover the concord, thoroughly, here, 
or to construct a synthesis exhaustive of all 
the mystery in the " constitution and course of 
Nature." The most we can do in such direc- 
tion, perhaps, is to gather up confirmations of 
an intuitive faith in the prosecution of our re- 
searches, eliminating false factors in our en- 
deavors to make out the mighty equation, so 
nourishing patience till the great illumination 
shall come. 

The interpretation of Nature is a vast and a 
very difficult business. No wonder, therefore, 
if the interpreters sometimes fail to agree in 
their conclusions, or that they disagree very 
seriously at times ; especially when the at- 



on existing dissensions. 147 

tempted interpretations are ex parte, in spirit, or 
in method, or in aim ; as so many of them are, 
it may be feared, whether attempted in the 
interests of Science, or in the interests of Reli- 
gion. The want of an intelligent, pliant cath- 
olicity in the prosecution of the great task, has 
been most afflictingly marked hitherto in the 
religious advocate. The average clergyman 
is in a confused state of mind in respect of 
these things ; the more liberally minded of the 
order finding it hard, I suspect, to reconcile 
old professional commitments with truths of a 
heterodox import which Science has forced 
upon the acceptance of the thinking world 
very generally to-day. 

The vocation of the Christian Teacher is 
daily becoming more difficult to follow, indeed, 
with anything like a complete mental serenity. 
His position is peculiar, in that nearly all the' 
lines of the higher controversies of the time 
converge upon it. None of the sister profes- 
sions require such a breadth and variety of cul- 
ture, or such a generosity and elasticity of sym- 
pathy, for the efficient following of it, as that of 
the Christian Teacher. Men in other profes- 
sions may confine themselves to studies which 
fall within more or less definite dimensions, 
feeling little or no concern in the settlement of 
questions seemingly foreign to their respective 



148 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

spheres. Discoveries may be made which may 
threaten to revolutionize an old order of things 
in one professional province, which in no way 
affect that of another. But the Theologian sits, 
so to speak, at the centre of radii which con- 
nect him with the vast circle of universal truth. 
There is scarcely a question debated in the 
schools in the settlement of which he is not 
concerned. Hence frequent occasion of dis- 
turbance for him, or for his Faith. The 
brotherhood of which he is a member might 
live in tolerable quiet, could they be allowed 
to mark out for themselves a little lot of ter- 
ritory, and to say to all other thinkers and 
workers — " Now, this is our plot in the great 
vineyard : let us cultivate it in peace." But, 
alas ! for such intellectual husbandmen ; and 
alas ! for all who so long for tranquillity in the 
higher callings of men to-day. That which 
they covet cannot be conceded. For one class 
of thinkers are compelled to intrude upon 
ground claimed by others ; they, the intrud- 
ers, being obliged to suffer intrusion upon 
theirs. 

The provinces of Science and of Religion 
overlap each other, at frequent points, and 
over considerable spaces. " Division of labor " 
is expedient, and helpful to human prog- 
ress, in some departments of human indus- 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 149 

try ; but no such division of labor is possible, 
in the intellectual world, as will allow the 
Theologian, or the man of Science, to lay- 
down his postulates, and to elaborate his proc- 
esses, and to formulate his conclusions, irre- 
spective of caveat or criticism from his profes- 
sional rival. It is vain, in other words, to say, 
as some of our religious apologists are saying 
just now, — "Let Eeligion and Science each 
follow its own course without interruption, or 
jealousy." Such counsel is vain, I say, since 
the domain of Nature, including Man, is one. 
The truths discovered in this or the other 
section of that domain may seem independent, 
to enthusiastic disciples in contending schools ; 
professional vocations of all sorts having oft- 
times a blinding effect upon the minds of the 
men who " have their being " in them ; yet is 
there not a single truth in any field of inquiry 
that can be justly claimed by any school or 
profession as exclusively its own ; knowledge 
of which fact ought to have a liberalizing 
effect both upon men of Science and upon 
Theologians. Let the Theologian take the 
fact to heart ; for it is he, with his fellows, 
who asks, most imploringly, at times, to be let 
alone in undisturbed possession of his peculiar 
postulates and principles. Let Christian Apol- 
ogists know, that they cannot, as Mr. Maurice 



150 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

once said, "go out to parley with men of 
Science with a white flag in their hand, say- 
ing — ' If you will let us alone we will do the 
same by you. Keep to your own province ; 
but do not enter ours. The reign of law 
which you proclaim we admit — outside of 
these walls : but not within them. Let there 
be peace between us.' " 

Yet have timid Theologians been urging 
this sort of compromise of late, as the best re- 
sort available to Christian " believers " in the 
present intellectual conflict of arms. A favor- 
ite form of such pleading for peace is this : — 
" The Bible was not given to teach Science : 
those who accept the doctrines of the Holy 
Book, cannot, therefore, be fairly summoned 
to defend them in the court to which Science 
makes its appeals." ISTow, there is pertinent 
truth, no doubt, in this plea ; truth that might 
be found helpful in delivering all parties to 
the debate from confusion of mind, and from 
bad temper; had all of them courage to ac- 
cept the position assumed in the plea frankly, 
and sufficient discretion to apply the principle 
asserted wisely ; with the requisite readiness 
of mind to accept all possible consequences. 

" The Bible was not given to men to teach 
Science " : that is the bold broad proposition ; 
a proposition charged with timely, inevitable 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 151 

truth. Inevitable, because the writers of the 
Bible had no Science to teach, in the sense of 
the word Science as we use it to-day, at least. 
But had they been rich in such possessions, it 
was not in the line of their vocation to use 
them. They had something fitter and more 
serviceable to do, in their ministry to the gener- 
ations of men among whom they lived. There 
are statements in the Bible, more especially in 
the older writings comprised in the Volume, 
of a scientific hearing • in the explanation of 
which the Science of to-day might claim to 
be heard, should its representatives ever deem 
it worth while ; but nowhere in the Book is 
there any Science, properly so called. For 
Science is knowledge, sifted, certified, formu- 
lated ; and the writers of our so-called " Sa- 
cred books " had no opportunity of attaining 
to such knowledge. The ages in which they 
lived had very little of such knowledge. But 
had the writers of our Biblical books been in 
possession of all the scientific knowledge of the 
several ages in which they lived, and had they 
incorporated it in their writings, it would have 
been of little avail ; or it would have been mis- 
leading, to after generations of men ; for the Sci- 
ence of one age has been foolishness, in large 
part, to later ages, through the whole educa- 
tional process of our race. Only by the in- 



152 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

trusion of causes that would have changed the 
whole economy of human life, could acquisi- 
tions destined to be made by men in later 
periods of the world's progress, have been an- 
ticipated in behalf of the writers of Hebrew 
or of Christian Scriptures. 

Conceding the claims of those who believe in 
a special revelation of God's mind to men, we 
must yet say, that only truth they could never 
have discovered of themselves has ever been so 
made known ; all other truth having been left 
to come forth to view through the ordinary laws 
of human progress. Or men have had to toil 
for it, finding deposits of the precious treas- 
ure at intervals only, as men find costly gems. 
So far is the complaint that the Bible has no 
reliable Science in it, or that what there is in 
it is inaccurate, from being of any force as 
making against the claims of the Book to a 
Divine authorship, the alleged fact ought to 
be construed as guaranteeing the Bible's va- 
lidity ; coming as the venerable Yolume does 
come, with "the image and superscription" 
upon it of the widely diversified times in 
which the writers of its different sections 
lived. By men knowing and weighing these 
things, the conclusion will not be counted 
alarmingly unorthodox, I take it, to say that 
Moses, Jewish prophets, or Christian Apostles, 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 153 

were neither Astronomers, nor Geologists, nor 
Physiologists, nor Natural Philosophers, be- 
yond what their respective times admitted of. 1 
It is weak and unworthy, therefore, for their 
disciples of our own time to fall into a fresh 
spasm of fear on every advance in scientific 
discovery. Such perturbations have been fre- 
quent in the Christian world, but after gener- 
ations have invariably smiled at them. 

But while the proposition, " the Bible was 
not given to teach Science," has the germ of 
a truth of some consequence in it in the con- 
troversy between Theologians and Scientific 
Sceptics, the inference drawn from the propo- 
sition is a glaring non-sequitur . Believers in 
Divine Kevelation may very fairly be called 
upon to tell us, I think, how inaccurate state- 
ments of a scientific bearing in the Bible can 
be shown to be compatible with claims pre- 
ferred in behalf of the Book as infallible ; the 
obligation being still heavier upon the religious 
Apologist to explain Biblical statements which 
the Science of our time counts among the 
myths of the world's childhood. There are 
frequent statements, or assumptions, in the 
Holy Book, notably in its earlier chapters, 
which requires such apologetic handling to 

1 " It does not follow that Christ was an impostor because 
Moses was not an astronomer."— Soame Jenyns. 



154 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

render them even intelligible to the disciplined 
apprehension of men to-day : — the origin and 
evolution of things, to wit : the presence of 
death on our globe, the aboriginal unity or 
variety of the human race, the myth or fact 
of the " fall," the origin and development of 
language, the phenomena of the "deluge." 
The men who accept the Biblical versions of 
these marvels, requiring us to accept them 
just as they are given in our Holy Scriptures, 
cannot waive the demand aside for some eluci- 
dation that might render them less incredible 
than they seem to our modern Mind. 

In the discussion of these and such questions, 
both parties, the Theological and the Scientific, 
have equal right to be heard ; neither having 
authority to arrest inquiry when becoming 
troublesome to the doctrinal partialities of the 
one or of the other. The Theologian must 
here condescend to deal with cool passionless 
evidence, abstaining from all abuse of counsel 
on the other side ; — a hint in rebuke of a tem- 
per too prevalent in " Defenders of the Faith." 
To betray such a spirit toward any who bear 
themselves worthily in the intellectual strife 
just now prevailing, is offensive. An Apolo- 
gist of clear insight, and of good culture, will 
welcome all thinkers, in whatever spheres they 
may pursue their callings, as fellow craftsmen ; 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 155 

in no way trying to repress the utterance of 
any honest conviction, nor to evade any legit- 
imate inference, how adverse soever to tradi- 
tional beliefs, or to current orthodoxies. 

But neither has the Scientist, on the other 
hand, any right to deem the Christian Apologist 
an intruder on this broad ground of mixed ques- 
tions. In the attempt to deduce the genesis of 
Man from a monad, for instance, or in the 
efforts of the Materialist to resolve all mental 
phenomena into physiological function, — in 
these investigations spiritual Philosophy is as 
directly and as fully concerned as Physical 
Science is ; and may fairly claim to be heard, 
therefore, in the valuation of the evidence 
submitted ; all lovers of truth having abun- 
dant occasion for rejoicing at the mutually jeal- 
ous watchfulness so provoked. For there is 
constant need, in every department of thought' 
and experiment, to guard against the idola 
tribus ; one effectual check upon which sort 
of beguilement, is supplied by what we may 
call the professional hostilities, which have 
marked all ages of active thought ; the parti- 
sans of rival schools being thus compelled to be 
careful in shaping hypotheses, and reserved in 
asserting conclusions. Some of the more ardent 
of these partisans, on the one side and on the 
other, have been provoked to unseemly anger 



156 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

in these strifes ; but the ' breezes ' awakened 
by the factions have winnowed a good deal of 
chaff from the wheat of a wholesome philo- 
sophic truth. 

We cannot cut up the territory of the intel- 
lect into professional sections, then, upon any 
such terms as shall leave either Scientists or 
Keligionists at liberty to hold their respective 
conclusions as independent, and final. The 
doctrine of neutrality, for which some of our 
Christian Scribes plead so pathetically to-day, 
is a poor expedient in the interests of peace. 
No such compromise is possible between Sci- 
ence and Keligion ; a good deal of the ground 
over which the great debate must needs range 
being common to both ; the lines which mark 
it out into sections being conventional merely, 
for the more thorough cultivation of the whole 
area. 

All investigators into observable phenom- 
ena, all who labor to coordinate discover- 
ies, with all who seek to interpret the mean- 
ings and purposes of the known facts and 
functions of the manifold organism which we 
call Nature, — all these are co-workers with the 
world's Spiritual Teachers, and are to be hon- 
ored with these as contributing to the end 
professedly desired by all. Some of these 
thinkers and workers have been animated by 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 157 

another spirit, at times ; professional preju- 
dices having distracted the judgment and em- 
bittered the temper of the prophets; dogma 
and denunciation having supplanted evidence 
and argument in the contentions of the 
Schools, too often. But by an increasing num- 
ber of men these things are regarded as ab- 
horrent to the calmly judicial Spirit which 
ought to preside over debates which aim at 
" the reconciliation of Science and Keligion," 
— to repeat one of the amiable platitudes of 
the time. 

Hitherto the advance toward a better under- 
standing between Scientists and Keligionists, 
has been seriously hindered by the rigid con- 
servatism of Theology. The education, the 
mental atmosphere, the routine reverence, the 
habitual resort to dogma, the pleasing conceit 
that he and his brethren are favorites with 
the Deity, — all these things have been un- 
friendly to the growth of a large and liberal 
thought in the Theologian. He has therefore 
been, as a rule, a persistent foe to free inquiry, 
ever, and everywhere ; either as sinful in itself, 
or as perilous to faith and piety. The fable 
of the ostrich has been verified in him. Pre- 
ferring safety in darkness, as he has dreamed, 
to danger in the light, he has occupied himself 
in stopping every chink in his sanctum through 



158 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

which a solitary ray of the surrounding ra- 
diance might possibly find entrance. 

No well-informed, fair-minded man will 
deny, however, that this stolid religious con- 
servatism has conferred substantial benefits 
upon the world ; especially when opinion and 
feeling affecting true religion have been giddy, 
or when heresies of a really serious sort have 
been in fashion. At such times, men not 
lightly given to change have been very service- 
able, in holding on to truths that might other- 
wise have been carried away in the rush. Such 
service has no doubt been sometimes rendered 
by the Theologian. In an uncertain shifting 
world, he has been the one steadfast imper- 
turbable witness for what he has deemed im- 
mutable truths. He has believed all along, 
that, though the heavens might dissolve, and 
the earth pass away, there are some things 
here that never change, and that cannot be 
changed — "the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever"; in support of which attitude the 
Theologian has had reasons to allege, some of 
which are unanswerable. As when he has 
said, for instance, that had Theology yielded 
to every demand of a capricious Science, — for 
Science, in the hands of its expounders, has 
often been capricious — Theology's disciples 
had been driven to distraction; while their 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 159 

teachers must have been unceasingly occupied 
in temporizing readjustments of their doctrines 
and canons. While something might be said 
also in behalf of religious Conservatism sug- 
gested by the nature of the truths it claims to 
have conserved ; which, as being morale mainly, 
and as having Divine sanctions — as Orthodoxy 
holds — and as having been witnessed to by re- 
liable witnesses for ages, and rendered sacred 
to the affection and trust of so many millions 
of the human race, ought not to be too readily 
surrendered, the Theologian has held ; and 
reasonably so, I think. Courageously assert- 
ing the special trusteeship of such truths, The- 
ology has set her face like a flint against 
storms of adverse criticism, and sometimes 
against more terrible storms of persecution ; 
and, to every demand to yield any fraction of 
what she has held to be " the Truth," she has' 
returned a speedy and an emphatic non-jpos- 
sumus. And those men are blind who can find 
in history, or in life as we know it, no occasion 
for such stubbornness ; while they are unsym- 
pathetic souls that are empty of all admiration 
of such a persistent moral bravery. 

But, unhappily, Theologians have not been 
content to abide within these tolerably im- 
pregnable lines. It has not sufficed for them 
to bear their testimony to immutable truths ; 



160 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

but they have invaded debatable territory, in 
a spirit which usually animates polemics ; 
claiming the right to decide controversies 
with which Theology has had little to do, and 
which many of its advocates have been piti- 
fully incompetent to handle in debate. This 
unwise forwardness in religious Apologists has 
been due, very largely, to their confounding 
the variable with the constant contents of 
" the Faith " ; they having somehow been led 
to assume, — and in some of them the assump- 
tion has been a fiery conviction — that the 
honor and efficacy of Keligion are bound up 
with the credit of a crowd of miscellaneous 
questions, ill-assorted, ill-defined, and of doubt- 
ful import to the best informed ; many of these 
questions, with the solutions which the Scribes 
had given to the world, being, from their very 
nature, liable to revision. 

In this way Religion has been involved in all 
sorts of needless complications ; many of her 
representatives having so demeaned themselves 
as to have fastened a bad reputation upon her 
among liberally-minded men. Hence it is, 
spite of what I have said as to the obstinacy 
of Theologians, that the history of Theology, 
or of the contests she has waged with Scepti- 
cism of various phases, is so largely a history 
of " change of base," or of ignominious retreats 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 161 

from positions she has found to be untenable. 
Hence, too, the strangely diversified attitudes 
which her disciples present before our own 
eyes toward the active thought of the time ; 
the more prudent among them seeking refuge 
from sceptical assaults in the doctrine of " open 
questions." 

But that was the only available position 
from the first for "believers," according to 
the terms of compromise upon which I 
was commenting a little while ago. "The 
Bible was not given to teach Science," we 
were assured. Well : let the Theologian hold 
on to and insist upon that, and he may sleep 
in peace, so far as his trouble might be found 
to spring from criticisms of his " Sacred 
Books." He need not then be nervously anx- 
ious about the possible meanings of certain 
monosyllables in those documents, or about 
the number of acres submerged by the " Del- 
uge," or about the cubic capacity of Noah's 
ark, or about the presence or absence of a cipher 
in "Exodus," "Chronicles," or "Kings"; his 
"doctrines of grace" being in no way in- 
volved in the fortunes of such questions, as he 
then may come to perceive. " Let comfortable 
people who know no sorrow," said a late mag- 
nanimous man, "trouble their brains as to 
whether sixty, or six hundred, thousand fight- 



162 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

ing men came with Moses out of Egypt. We 
care not for numbers. What we care for is, 
not how many came out, but who brought 
them out." 1 

Yes : for that sort of free handling of the 
Sacred Kecord must the Christian Apologist 
be prepared to-day, holding all such inci- 
dental matters as open to review; or, need 
being shown, to correction. For say that he 
believes the Record to have consisted originally 
of the ipsissima verba of its reputedly Divine 
Author ; yet cannot the fact be disguised that 
it was put into the world in such shape, and 
subjected to such conditions, that no man of 
sense can insist upon every jot and tittle of 
the Kecord, as we have it now, as of infallible 
authority. The mutabilities of time are trace- 
able in it; Scribes have imported "improve- 
ments " into it ; while theological necessities 
have seemed to justify dishonest dealings with 
it : which facts might well dispose the stoutest 
believer in the integrity and authority of 
Divine Revelation, surely, toward a tolerance 
of opinions hitherto disallowed by our Ortho- 
doxies. By any man competent to discuss 
these questions worthily, it ought to be ad- 
mitted that it is far from a dangerous con- 
cession to say, that contentions about matters 

1 The Rev. Charles Kiugsley. 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 163 

such as those I just now instanced, may be de- 
cided this way or that without imperilling the 
faith of Christendom in the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

But the ordinary type of the Theologian 
would seem to be constitutionally averse to 
open questions. Truth for him must have 
no ravelled edges. The far-spreading areas 
which research has explored, in parts, in 
the past, and over which adventurous Thought 
claims the right to range to-day, — these areas 
the Church has closely fenced in; the limits 
being clearly defined in her Creeds and Cate- 
chisms ; no discovery within the vast enclosure 
being allowed to pass into general acceptance 
without the Church's sanction. Hence the 
authoritative airs of the representative of the 
Church as he delivers himself from the pulpit, 
commonly. He has so long played the part of 
Sir Oracle that he brooks not a whisper of 
dissent, but deals out dogmatic decisions with 
most imposing assurance ; closing all trouble- 
some questions with a waive of his priestly 
hand; hinting at alarming consequences in 
another sphere for all who doubt his word ! 
It is really afflicting to hear, indeed, how every 
little stammering talker in a pulpit to-day will 
presume to claim the sanction of the Church 
for his ignorance, or for his conceit. But 



164 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

sadder yet is it to be compelled to confess, 
that many of the men who occupy seats of 
high ecclesiastical influence among us, look 
coldly, or with antipathy, upon some of the 
best authenticated results of modern research : 
— a very pitiful fact, surely, for the closing 
decade of a marvelously progressive century, 
as we count this Nineteenth. 

But yield we must, — for I too am of the 
illiberal fraternity — and much, or we shall 
provoke our own children to scorn. Great 
concessions have already been wrung from 
Theology. "We of this generation cannot con- 
ceive how great a thing it was for religious 
Apologists to be constrained to allow, that 
Moses, as well as later Biblical writers, wrote, 
not actual, but phenomenal truth only, touch- 
ing matters pertaining to Physical Science, 
as when they convey the idea of the Earth's 
being a plane, and not an oblate spheroid, as 
we have long known it is ; but men abreast of 
the critical culture of our time are prepared 
for a considerable advance upon that. Some 
of them are frankly sajdng, indeed — Christian 
Scholars being among the frankest of them — 
that the "Sacred writers" sometimes wrote 
simply traditional truth, in dealing with mat- 
ters pertaining to historical Science. Nor to 
intelligent Christian men should the conces- 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 165 

sion seem alarming. The literatures of all 
peoples begin with myths, and are continued 
in legends ; the Scribes of later times gather- 
ing up the legends, and weaving them into 
their narratives without formally distinguish- 
ing the legendary items from those which we 
should now call historic. The capacity so to 
distinguish is attained late in the intellectual 
development of a people ; even in that of its 
most progressive minds. 

Nor do I see how we can make the claim 
good, that it must needs have been essentially 
otherwise in the growth of critical ability in 
the Hebrew mind ; except by assuming a con- 
tinuous miraculous direction of its working's. 
Such an assumption would be of no avail, how- 
ever, with the literary productions of the He- 
brews with which we are here concerned under 
our eyes, and subject, — as they are, of right- 
to the critical implements and methods that 
are applied to all other literatures. The actual 
application of these to the books of the Old 
Testament has long since shown us, that in 
them are to be found, as in all the literary 
productions of the world's intellectual child- 
hood, mythical imaginings, and romantic in- 
ventions, and poetic decorations — as all duly- 
equipped and candid Scholars now admit; 
those whose hearts would still cling to the 



166 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

notion of a continuous miraculous inspira- 
tion and supervision of the Biblical writers, 
being compelled to acquiesce in the conclu- 
sions of Historical Criticism as to these 
things. 

Nor ought these heavy demands, as they 
may seem to some, upon Christian believers, to 
be construed as supplying just occasion for dis- 
esteem of the Bible as a whole, or of its essen- 
tial contents. For when were men ever in a 
position to stipulate with the Creator, that any 
special directions He might deign to make 
known for their moral guidance, should be ab- 
solutely free from all traces of human igno- 
rance or frailty, in the form in which they 
should be made known to, and conserved for 
after ages ? Or upon what grounds can we 
justly insist to-day, that we will not practically 
accept the revelation of His mind and will 
which as Christians we claim to have in the 
Bible, except upon the assumption that the 
Book holds no material whatever of an infe- 
rior value or authority ? Do not the principles 
postulated and expounded at large by Butler, 
in Chap, iii., Part II., of the " Analogy," show 
us very convincingly, how a Christian man may 
admit that there are fabulous admixtures in 
our Holy Scriptures, while continuing to re- 
vere these Scriptures as given and inspired for 






ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 167 

our help and salvation ? l For it is not these 
incidental inferior elements in the make-up of 
the Divine Book that we revere, but those 
which make up its immutably Divine sub- 
stance, with the heavenly tone and drift of 
the Book ; — 'tis these things we love and trust 
in the Scriptures; knowing how to account 
for very undivine things being there, with per- 
fect composure of mind. 

The concessions I am here pleading for 
must be made soon, if we would prevent in- 
crease of mischief to the cause of Religion 
among the reading and thinking classes of 
Christendom. Faith is giving way under 
the strain put upon it by our Rabbis, by their 
resisting demands which a riper culture has 
been making for sometime. Some of the more 
liberally minded among them allow it to be 
silently understood, I know, that not all that 
was once imposed by the Church upon the 
faith of disciples is necessary to be received now, 
before a man can claim the title of a Chris- 
tian. But that is a cowardly way of dealing 
with the new issues ; some of which I have 
been elucidating. 

1 " Neither obscurity, nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor 
various readings, nor any disputes about authors of partic- 
ular parts, nor any other things of the like kind, though 
they had been much more considerable than they are," (the 
great dialectician might have added unveriflable legends) 
"can overthrow the authority of the Scriptures," 



168 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

Meanwhile the Church, as a whole, goes 
contentedly on, reading out to those who 
gather in her synagogues the cosmogony and 
the anthropology ascribed to Moses, and the 
amazing longevities of "patriarchs," and the 
philologically curious story of Babel, with the 
arrest of the sun and of the moon on their 
march through the heavens at the bidding of 
a Hebrew warrior ; just as if nothing had hap- 
pened since the nursery days of human devel- 
opment to discredit such stories, or to render 
them less fit for Christian edification than 
they were once held to be. 

Still worse is it, for unskilled teachers in our 
Seminaries to be insisting upon the literal truth 
of such stories, to crowds of young people who 
gather about them. For these young people, 
or their like, on attaining to larger knowledge 
in the school of the world, discover that much 
that was taught them in their undiscerning 
years is unreliable ; all faith being abandoned, 
often, in the struggle with sceptical objections 
which for many of them ensues on their going 
forth into life ; their religious instructors hav- 
ing done nothing to fortify them for such 
struggle. A good deal of the infidelity, in- 
deed, in the manhood and womanhood of our 
time, has a tone of angry protest in it, against 
the imposture — as it is often counted — prac- 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 169 

ticed upon their childhood by teachers who 
carefully kept all difficulties beyond the ken of 
their youthful disciples ; or glossed difficulties 
over with glosses which even children soon 
come to see through. 

But more pertinent to the special purpose of 
this paper — and far more important — is it to 
add, that it is just here, in the investing of the 
legendary or merely poetical things read in 
the Bible with essential and permanent truth, 
that most of our trouble with the Science of 
the time originates. There is very slight oc- 
casion left to fear for, or to fight about, things 
of a really vital importance to Eeligion in our 
Holy Scriptures. Christ has come into human 
history never to go out of it again. His truth 
is in the very air we breathe, and will animate 
all coming generations of men. His Church, 
too, will ever have work to do, as an educa- 
tional institution, and as a refuge for souls in 
the time of trouble. 

But, unhappily, we Christians are encum- 
bered with an inheritance from remotely past 
ages, of another sort from that bequeathed 
by Jesus. In addition to things of a moral 
and immutable value in our Divine Directory, 
orthodox theologies require us to accept a 
crowd of apocryphal things ; all which, in the 
popular religious estimation, are massed to- 



170 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

gether with things forever reliable under the 
title of " Inspired Truth " ; inspiration being 
commonly taken, with a strange logical loose- 
ness, as including, or as drawing after it, in- 
fallibility ! Whatever dissension, or antag- 
onism, or conflict, may exist to-day between 
the representatives of Science and the men 
who speak in the name of Religion, has its 
chief provocation in, and is mainly fed by, 
this indiscriminate estimate of the "Sacred 
Records " ; which estimate both Religionists 
and Scientists blindly persist in assuming to 
represent no more than the essential contents 
of our Christian Faith ; — to the very sore dam- 
age of its reputation. 1 

I am chiefly, almost wholly, intent in this 
paper, upon commending the spirit of a large 
and pliant tolerance to both parties in these 
high debates, by showing how much may 
fairly be claimed by this party or by that, and 
how much must be granted by the one, or by the 
other. But my animadversions have hitherto 
been almost exclusively directed against the 

'"The books and traditions of a sect may contain, 
mingled with propositions strictly theological, other propo- 
sitions, purporting to rest on the same authority, which re- 
late to physics. If new discoveries should throw dis- 
credit on the physical propositions, the theological proposi- 
tions, unless they can be separated from the physical proposi- 
tions, will share in that discredit." Macauley, on " Kanke's 
History of the Popes." 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 171 

intolerance of Theologians. The severe things 
I have said have not been meant for all the 
masters in our Schools of Christian Thought, 
however; among whom may be found those 
who combine with their faith in Divine Beve- 
lation, a courageous confidence in the most ad- 
venturous scientific explorations, believing in, 
and themselves following eagerly in quest of, 
the harmony existing between the Works and 
the Word of God, as they divine. - By these 
nobler representatives of religious Apologetics 
are exhibited, not infrequently, a liberality of 
thought, and a generosity of sympathy with 
modern progress, with an openness of mind to 
new truth, and candor in the examination of 
alleged facts, and a magnanimity of temper in 
the discussion of rival theories, not always 
found in men of Science. 

Nor have the more timid of the disciples of 
Theology, whom I have had chiefly in view in 
my caveats, done all they have done in resist- 
ance to our " new learning " without provoking 
occasion. The world has been made acquainted 
in recent years with a new species of dogma- 
tism ; all the more offensive because marking the 
utterances of men who have so vigorously de- 
nounced dogmatism, as hateful in itself, and as a 
hindrance to the discovery, or to the dissemina- 
tion, of truth. A priesthood of Positivism has 



172 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

arisen among us, as narrow and intolerant in 
temper as the priesthood of the old faith ever 
was; and which, being denied permission to 
suppress "superstition" by force, has given 
vent to its detestation in an imperious scorn. 
Proclaiming through the press, or from the 
professorial chair, the gospel of a relentless 
Fate, or commending to our deepest trust the 
working of a self-evolved and automatic mech- 
anism, they deny the possibility of the ex- 
istence of a Maker and Euler anywhere in 
space. Cordially crediting matter with pre- 
rogatives we should once have called Divine, 
they deride the notion of an inspiring Mind, 
building their altars to a grim sort of god they 
call Force, or Law. 

The facts which they set in array in sup- 
port of their faith are ofttimes imposing 
enough, but, as under all new and fervid 
inspirations, there is a marked lack of log- 
ical coherence between their data and the con- 
clusions which the data are made to yield. 1 
Impatient of research, or when research fails 
them, our new masters make out their case by 
resort to the speculation they are wont to de- 
cry; flinging across every chasm in their 
schemes the bridge of a baseless hypothesis. 

1 " The logical feebleness of Science is not sufficiently 
borne in mind." Professor Tyndall. 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 173 

They despise old creeds, but they revere new 
formulae. Fugitive opinions are made to do 
service as immutable principles. Mere modes 
of operation, or groups of conditions, are ac- 
cepted as exhaustive explanations of mysteries 
which they do but suggest. Or as the Duke 
of Argyll puts substantially the same allega- 
tion, in his " Keign of Law " : — " The mere 
ticketing and orderly assortment of external 
facts, is constantly spoken of " — by our shal- 
lower scientists, he means, — " as if it " — this 
assorting and cataloguing of phenomena — 
" were in the nature of an explanation ; and as 
if no higher truth in respect to natural phe- 
nomena were to be expected, or desired." l 

Yet this style of thing passes for Science, 
with the many, to-day ; and that because of 
the oracular tone assumed by the men who 
declaim these things ; while men of some dis- 
cernment among us are often charmed out of 
all regard to the truth or untruth of so-called 
scientific statements or conclusions, by the 
high-sounding rhetoric in which the high 
priests of Positivism so much excel. One of 
these, and a man of vast and varied learning 
too, tells us that " Life is a continuous adjust- 

1 "Oh Law! Law! most abused of scientific terms: 
what an infinity of dogmatic illegalities are committed in 
thy name!" W. L. Thornton; " OLD-FASHIONED 
Ethics," p. 120. 



174 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

ment of internal relations to external rela- 
tions." But what do we gain from the lumi- 
nous utterance, to add to what our forefathers 
knew when they talked of the " animal spirits," 
and of the "vital fluid"? Why do bodies 
gravitate toward each other? it is asked in 
catechizing learners in the schools from which 
superstition is excluded. Because God willed 
it, another Cowper's Cottager might answer. 
" No," says the presiding oracle ; " but because 
they attract each other." But, to my appre- 
hension, the answer of the master of learning 
sheds no more light upon the mystery he thus 
waives aside, than the answer of an ignorant 
piety. 1 

"We doubtless know more than our earlier 
ancestors knew, of the interdependence of 
things in the great Organism with the order 
and workings of which Science occupies itself, 
or of the relations of many of its parts to 
other parts ; but the forming and the inform- 
ing Energy ever escapes detection. There is 
something back of, or beneath, that order and 
those workings of which Science, as distinct 
from Philosophy, can tell us nothing. Analy- 
sis conducts to the unknown : to that which is 
unknown to scientific scrutinies, at least ; Mr. 
Tyndall very frankly confessing, in one of the 
^ee Janet's "Final Causes," note p. 142, Edin. Ed. 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 175 

many passages of a rare literary beauty and 
power in his writings, the incompetence of his 
own school to close the debate between spirit- 
ual Philosophy and Materialism, with any 
authoritative utterance adverse to the former. 
" Science is mute " here, says our modern 
Master of Words; — in the contention as to 
whether there is any Power back of or above 
the material mechanism of the universe, that is ; 
— but adding a question which hints at what 
he would fain say, I suspect : "If, then, the 
materialist is confounded and Science is dumb, 
who else is prepared with a solution? To 
whom has this arm of the Lord been revealed ? 
Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our 
ignorance, priest and philosopher, one and 
all." 1 

Well: the attitude were becoming to the 
highest among us, while the confession would 
be good for the wisest; but, unhappily for 
those who would leave the matter there, the 
irrepressibly inquisitive Something within us 
will not let us rest in the agnosticism thus 
touchingiy commended to our acceptance. 
Men have ever and everywhere asked, as they 
are asking still with a resolute persistence 
— Whence? Why? Whither? Materialism 
would have us be content with settling the 
1 "Fragments of Science," p. 421, Appleton's Ed. 



176 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

how of things about us, and in us, and abroad 
in space ; but to the extent that Materialism 
should succeed in prevailing upon men to oc- 
cupy themselves wholly with asking and an- 
swering the question How, Science would 
stagnate and decay. No : inquiry cannot be 
arrested because the Agnostic tells us he can 
go no further ; any more than at the warning 
of the Theologian that his " Sacred ground " 
must be respected. The final How of the 
Materialist suggests the Whence, and the 
"Whence suggests the Why, and the Why 
suggests the Whither ; and so the disciples of 
Materialism snap the leash in which the leaders 
would hold them, and the harriers are out 
o'er the wide-spreading plains of Philosophy, 
not even bating breath at what the Materialist 
calls " the quagmires of metaphysics " ! Yes ; 
'tis even so : let men of feeble intellectual limb, 
or of a timid prudence, lament it as they may. 
Physiology is the pathway to Psychology; 
into whose misty realm we must follow the 
problems which an empirical Science suggests, 
but which it can never answer. 

And that confessedly : Science, in her more 
temperate moods, avowing that she knows 
nothing of origins, or of ultimate destinations ; 
that she has nothing to do with anything but 
with processes; knowing nothing of any 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 177 

Power from without, she tells us, in any way 
affecting these processes. Well: let Science 
be content with saying that, and we shall hear 
much less than we hear now of dissensions be- 
tween her and Eeligion. But ever and anon 
she shows restiveness within these her own 
self-prescribed limits ; her representatives be- 
taking themselves to the schools of Philosophy, 
to dictate conclusions there ; denouncing all 
prying into things beyond their professional 
ken. But Science, in the persons of her dis- 
ciples, is offensively presuming in all this — in 
so insisting that the limits to which she has 
come shall be regarded as impassable barriers 
by thinkers of all other schools — and this spite 
of the obvious fact that those limits are con- 
stantly changing, and spite of the fact that 
many of her own conclusions are as yet con- 
fessedly inconclusive. Herein the Scientist 
repeats the blunder of the Theologian, in his 
demanding that the dictates of Theology shall 
be final for all men, and for all time. Science 
ought to be ashamed of herself in assuming 
such airs ; seeing that in her more candid mo- 
ments she confesses, that the explanations she 
has to offer of things within her own province, 
are far from satisfactory ; and remembering 
how largely she draws upon the unknown, or 
the " unknowable," to eke out the account she 



178 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

gives us of the system of Nature; and re- 
membering, too, the differences that exist 
among her prophets as to what are, or what 
are not, incontrovertible articles in her creed. 
In deciding this last very important matter 
we are cautioned to " take Science at her best." 
But how shall we discriminate between Science 
at her best in Haeckel, who postulates proto- 
plasm as the only working power he needs to 
produce a Universe, and Science speaking 
through the lips of Mr. Tyndall, who tells us 
that the universe, or our own familiar globe, 
at least, once existed in a state unendurable to 
protoplasm? 1 This adjudication of the emi- 
nent Englishman being received as authentic, 
the hypothecating of another working power 
is required to produce protoplasm ; whether 
the "idea" of Hegel, or the "will" of Schop- 
enhauer, or the "absolute" of Schelling, or 
the " divine wisdom " of Leibnitz, who shall 
say ? Or how shall we reconcile the bald ma- 
terialism of a Maudsley, or the spontaneous- 

1 " There was a time when the earth was a red-hot melted 
globe, on which no life could exist. In the course of ages its 
surface cooled ; but, to quote the words of one of our great- 
est savants, 4 when it first became fit for life there was no 
living thing upon it.' How then are we to conceive the 
origination of organized creatures?" — "Contemp. Bev.," 
vol. xxix., p. 901. 

Of the doctrines of the Haeckel school Mr. Tyndall else- 
where says: — "Surely these notions represent an absurdity 
too great to be entertained by any sane mind." 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 179 

generation assumptions of Bastian, with. Mr. 
Darwin's doctrine of a Divine inbreathing of 
life into two or three rudimentary organisms ; l 
Science being supposed to be " at her best " in 
all these gentlemen? The mechanical Evo- 
lutionst, again, asks for inconceivable millions 
of ages for the accomplishment of the task 
which the fiery atoms had before them when 
first they began their dance in space ; and Sir 
William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) answers that 
Astronomy cannot grant the time required. 
The hypothesis of Laplace had no need of a 
God, but Newton required a God to account 
for gravitation. The law of " Natural Selec- 
tion " explains for the Darwinian the whole 
long mysterious advance of life, up from some 
simple germ to consciousness, and conscience, 
and will ; but Mr. Wallace, a chief among the 
prophets in the school of Natural Science, tells 
us that the process stops at Man. 2 

These things are not said in derogation of 
the solid claims of Science. Certainly not. 
They are aimed, in a half -playful vein, at the 
fallibilities of scientists, not at any weakness 
or inconsistency in Science ; — a distinction to 
be borne in mind in the conduct of discussions 
such as that I am now occupied with. A good 

1 "Origin of Species," Amer. Ed., p. 429. 
a " Natural Selection," Chap, x., passim. 



180 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

deal of poetry slips into the treatment of these 
themes, although poetry is supposed to have 
no place in scientific discourse ; non- u Scientific 
uses of the imagination " being quite common 
with our Positivists. But toward Science, 
which is sifted, certified knowledge, as I have 
defined it, — toward this, we can entertain no 
disparaging feeling, of course. Of Science, in- 
deed, we may say with Hooker in his glowing 
eulogy of Law : — " Her seat is the bosom of 
God, her voice the harmony of the world : all 
things in heaven and in earth do her homage ; 
the very least as feeling her care, and the 
greatest as not exempted from her power." 

Yet may we be permitted to repeat Frofessor 
Virchow's declaration, that there is a good 
deal of "unverified Science" abroad to-day; 
which, not being certified knowledge, is there- 
fore not Science. "While we may also take 
upon us to resent the pity that is so freely in- 
dulged in to-day, toward those of us who still 
remain in " the bondage of superstition " ; that 
sort of thing being out of place in any inter- 
course taking place between scientific sceptics 
and men still retaining religious convictions. 
But to how much of such effrontery have we 
been treated in these later years ! No wonder 
if believers in the old Gospel, ill-informed, as 
a rule, as to the causes and tendencies of the 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 181 

intellectual commotion prevailing about them, 
— no wonder if many of these men have been 
startled by the extravagances talked of late in 
the name of Science ; or that some of them 
have been driven to assume extreme positions 
toward modern Thought. Yet is the fear fool- 
ish that any great interest in Morals or in Re- 
ligion is likely to suffer shipwreck, or to be in 
the slightest degree imperilled, in the intel- 
lectual tempest said to be "raging" in our 
time. There has been a violent swing of the 
speculative pendulum within the space of fifty 
years from spiritualism toward materialism, 
from metaphysics to physics. But a reaction 
is already noticeably upon us ; for the eternal 
questions are with us still, and the insatiate 
longings are in us still ; and the former can 
never be answered, nor will the latter ever be 
laid, by a Science which resolves the secret of 
the Universe into protoplasm ! 

With nothing like scorn, or jealousy, how- 
ever, may Theology regard the enthusiasm for 
material Science everywhere predominant to- 
day ; for it will leave rich deposits of human- 
izing and elevating and refining acquisitions 
to the ever-increasing store of the world. 
Fresh discoveries, or new interpretations of 
old facts, will continue to seem ill-fitting to 
long-accepted conclusions ; — whence debate and 



182 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

strife between intellectual conservatism and 
intellectual radicalism, in the future as in the 
past. But after generations will adjust the 
new to the old, as generations have ever been 
doing, and as we are doing to-day, with no felt 
discord in the whole so made up. The well-at- 
tested truths of Biology, of Chemistry, of Physi- 
ology, of Psychic phenomena, so puzzling to 
many of us now, will take their places in the 
evolving line of order as quietly, or as unquietly, 
as the discoveries of Copernicus did, with no 
sensible shock to the foundation on which Chris- 
tian Faith reposes. 

" Let knowledge grow from more to more," 
then, revealing the manifold wealth and va- 
riety of Nature, and applying its discoveries 
to the relief and help of Man. We acknowl- 
edge the service with all thankfulness. Only, 
let not Science, in conceit of her powers, 
or rendered vain by her triumphs, tell us that 
there is nothing to know or to revere in the 
vast Economy of which we are part except mat- 
ter and phenomena ! " Great God ! I'd rather 
be a Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn," 
with sentiment, and reverence, and vague high 
hopes in me ; with communings with the Un- 
seen — if only of " a silent sort " — and with 
dreamings of a life unlived, and with struggle 
to attain the unattainable, than have my faith 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 183 

and my ambition confined within the dimen- 
sions of the materialist's curt creed. Men of a 
native acuteness, and of spiritual susceptibility, 
conscious of wants beyond the power of tem- 
poral resources to satisfy, will go on refusing 
to worship mechanism, or atomic activities, or 
electrical currents, though called by divine 
names. The prophetic human soul will persist 
in suspecting that there is a spirit in the mech- 
anism, that the atoms are animated, that the 
currents are from a higher source : will persist 
in disbelieving that courage and cowardice, 
laughter and tears, the blessedness of peace, 
the misery of remorse, sin, guilt, shame, 
or truth, nobleness, sweet affections, are noth- 
ing but the blind play of molecular elements, 
or the outworking of a latent heat ! 

When the pride and the dissipation of this 
latest Renaissance shall have passed away, 
there will come, we may safely anticipate, I 
think, the modesty and the reverence of a 
more enlightened and more firmly consolidated 
Christian Faith. Many men are just now 
giddy about, while some men rave over, the 
achievements and predictions of contemporary 
Thought. There is ground for gratitude, but 
none for vanity, or for fear. Devout souls 
start up alarmed every now and then that the 
foundation of their hopes is going to fail, but 



184 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

when the vapor of the hour is past, the eternal 
Eoek is there still. 

Rock ? Nay ; no rock at all : nothing more 
reliable than fugitive sand, surely, seeing the 
blanched look that spreads over the faces of 
religious believers, on some bolder sceptical 
speculation being launched upon the intellec- 
tual air. " O the pity of it." For speculation 
is but guessing at solutions of mysteries ; some- 
times hitting the mark, but ofttimes missing 
it. But when hitting it " in the eye," never 
disturbing the confidence of sensible men in 
the eternal verities. Let us be patient, and 
forbearing, trying to possess our souls in peace 
when things look threatening for Christian 
hope. So it has been, often ; yet Christian 
hope survives. So is it now, to the apprehen- 
sions of some of us. But " this also is vanity." 
Of all the questions which agitate the thinking 
world to-day, few will send a ripple to the 
farther shore of Time. Men launch their the- 
ories upon the great sea, fondly dreaming they 
will live through every tempest that may 
come ; but, as with the mimic craft of chil- 
dren, the waters suck them in, and not even a 
waif floats to tell where they perished ! 

I have contributed nothing in this Essay to- 
ward the solution of any one outstanding prob- 
lem in controversy between Eeligionists and 



ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 185 

Scientists. I had no such purpose before me 
in sitting down to write. I am not competent 
to such tasks. I have been simply pleading 
that a broader and more pliant tolerance, with 
a more patient forbearance, may be habitually 
shown by both parties. The last word has not 
been spoken yet by either of them. " We do 
not know enough of the matter," to use one of 
Butler's favorite phrases. 

In closing my present line of reflections and 
animadversions, it affords me pleasure to cite 
the saying of a man worth hearing in these high 
debates ; who condenses into a paragraph nearly 
all that I have said in the prosecution of my 
chief purpose in this paper : — " He who contem- 
plates the universe from the religious point of 
view, must learn to see that this which we call 
Science is one constituent of the great whole ; 
and as such ought to be regarded with a sen- 
timent like that which the remainder excites. 
While he who contemplates the universe from 
the scientific point of view, must learn to see 
that this which we call Keligion is similarly a 
constituent of the great whole ; and being such, 
must be treated as a subject of science with 
no more prejudice than any other reality. It 
behoves each party to strive to understand 
each other, with the conviction that the other 
has something worthy to be understood ; and 



186 ON EXISTING DISSENSIONS. 

with the conviction that, when mutually re- 
cognized, this something will be the basis of a 
complete reconciliation." — Herbert Spencer's 
" First Principles" j). 21. 



VI. 

AN HISTOKIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 



187 



VI. 

AN HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 



Cheistianity is an historical religion. 
We can place our finger, so to speak, upon 
the epoch of its birth in our accepted Chronol- 
ogy. The countries in which it had its earliest 
home, or which first felt its regenerating 
power, are there, definite and certified, in the 
Geography of our globe. The men whom 
Christianity called into public life, or with 
whom it had dealings, are real, tangible men, 
whose names and doings have place in authen- 
tic Biography. While the institutions which 
it founded, and the customs that it originated, 
are with us in undiminshed vigor to-day. 

Now, to establish the truth of these claims 
were to render good service to the cause of 
Christian Faith, surely. Nor were the task 
very difficult ; for the Christian records are of 
recent origin, comparatively. The New Tes- 
tament is a modern book, compared with the 
literature of ancient India, or of Egypt, or 
even of Greece, in her better days. It was 
written, or its component parts were written, 

189 



190 HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

within what we call the historical limit, in the 
light of an advanced civilization; while the 
writers tell us, in the main, what they them- 
selves had seen, or heard, or otherwise had 
good assurance of, and that in a plain, unvar- 
nished way. The substance of what they 
tell us touching the origin and early develop- 
ment of Christianity may be stated within a 
brief compass. 

In the reign of Tiberius Caosar there ap- 
peared in Palestine a wonderful personage, 
who claimed to have been sent to speak with 
men about love, and righteousness, and eter- 
nal life ; and sundry other things which the 
world needed to hear about. He called God 
His Father ; told men that they were brethren ; 
and set them the example of a beautiful and 
many-sided goodness. He gathered disciples 
about Him ; taught publicly ; wrought wonders ; 
— or so the New Testament narrative repre- 
sents — but, provoking the anger of the rulers 
of His people, He was put to a cruel death ; the 
Koman representative of the time assenting 
to the taking off. The record goes on to tell 
us, however, that on the third day after that 
He rose again from death, and ascended to 
heaven ; and that His disciples, inspired with 
a strange enthusiasm, perpetuated the system 
that had seemed crushed by the crucifixion of 



HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 191 

its founder. Spite of bitter persecutions, the 
movement, thus reanimated, rapidly enlarged 
itself ; men of all grades and of all tribes ac- 
cepting its doctrines, social and political in- 
fluence coming more and more under its sway ; 
till, at length, the civilized world came, almost 
wholly, to be called after the name of the 
Man who had been put to death on a little 
hill just outside of Jerusalem ! 

Such is a brief and rapid-running outline of 
the story which we have in the New Testa- 
ment, of Jesus, and of the beginning of the re- 
ligion that bears His name. For Christian be- 
lievers in general it is sufficient; the story 
having marks of truth in it most convincing, 
to all who will examine them fairly and in a 
right temper ; while the witness of the Chris- 
tian Church to the same effect is unanswer-' 
able. Yet has the question occurred to us, no 
doubt, on hearing or reading of these won- 
ders : — What has the history of the outlying 
world of the time to say to these things ? 
Are there any testimonies to their truth to be 
found outside the literature which Christian- 
ity created? Did the proclamation of the 
Gospel wake any echoes in places and among 
peoples beyond the limits of Palestine ? Has 
Christ any other witnesses than Evangelists 
and Apostles ? Or did He come and go un- 



192 HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 



noticed except by His disciples and friends ? 
]STow, to minds of a certain temperament, these 
are questions of immense interest. From sym- 
pathy with such men — men of an inquiring, 
sceptical disposition, some of whom may pos- 
sibly take this book in hand — I am going to 
answer these questions in the affirmative, as 
best I can within the narrow space to which I 
must confine myself. To Christian believers, 
some of them not well informed as to these 
matters, possibly, it may prove a gratifying 
discovery, should I succeed in making the 
claim quite evident, that the great facts of 
their religion are found, not only in authori- 
ties which, being interested, might be sus- 
pected of partiality, or of a too easy credulity ; 
but in authorities free from all possibility of 
suspicion of such sort attaching to them : in 
Jewish and in Pagan writers, for instance; 
who, if they give us any testimony in any way 
favorable to Christianity, must have given it 
unwillingly, or unwittingly. But can any such 
testimony be produced ? The following pages 
will supply an answer to that inquiry, in part, 
at least. 

The materials available for such service are 
but scanty, it must be confessed. The wear 
and tear of well-nigh twenty centuries have 
wrought immense ruin among the literary 



HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 193 

treasures of antiquity. Once abundant, they 
are now few and fragmentary; which fact 
will explain, very largely, why we have so 
little in secular history bearing upon the pres- 
ence and operations of early Christianity in 
the world. The scantiness of such testimony 
was once, and for a time very clamorously, 
alleged as an objection to the credibility of 
the New Testament records. The objection 
is scarcely ever heard to-day, however ; His- 
torical Criticism having done so much in recent 
years to establish the reliability of those rec- 
ords. Yet was it not wholly unreasonable to 
have supposed, that the commotion which 
Christianity is represented as having created 
in the very heart of the world's civilization by 
its earlier life and work, would have left very 
marked traces in the writings of those times. 
The truth is, however, that to-day we find 
comparatively few such traces. But all that 
remains to us of ancient literatures is but 
little, as I have just intimated. 

In addition to this consideration it should be 
borne in mind, that there was very little in the 
ministry of Jesus or in that of His Apostles, to 
attract the attention of the great world without. 
Palestine's place among the nations was too 
obscure ; its people, the Jews, of too little im- 
portance. No writer in Kome, or in Alexan- 



194 HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

dria, or in Athens, in the first century of our 
era, would arrest his pen to make note of the 
last rumor that had come thither as to the 
doings of people in Judsea, or in Galilee ; peo- 
ple who had for long been esteemed insanely 
superstitious by Pagan nations. 

To which facts we may add another in ex- 
planation of the matter. Let it be recollected, 
that the secular writings that have come down 
to us from those early days, are from men who 
were strangers or adversaries, to the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ ; and there will be less occasion 
for wonder left why the writers tell us so 
little about the Christian movement of their 
time. Eeligious aversion would blind the eyes 
of a Philo to its importance ; while Pagan 
writers would look upon it as merely a new 
phase of an old fanaticism, and would dismiss 
it accordingly. 

We have parallels, I may remind the reader, 
moreover, to the supposed difficulty with which 
I am dealing. Socrates was in some respects 
the most conspicuous figure in Athens for a 
considerable period ; yet Thucydides, the very 
prince of historians, has not a word about him. 
Plutarch is very far from being a merely myth- 
ical personage ; and }^et, though the contempo- 
rary of Juvenal, Seneca, Quintillian, Suetonius, 
and the two Plinys, he is never once mentioned, 



HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 195 

or in any way referred to, by any one of them ; 
while Plutarch himself, though a voluminous 
writer, nowhere makes the remotest allusion to 
any one of them, or to their productions ! * But 
the references that we have in ancient authors 
to Jesus, or to His work, though comparatively 
slight, will be found of interest, I trust, — or 
those that may be selected — in elucidation of 
the theme I am handling. 

And first we may cite the Jewish historian 
Josephus to our aid. He was born about the 
year 37 of our era — about four or five years, 
that is, after the date assigned to the Ascension 
of Christ — and lived till he was twenty-six years 
old in Jerusalem. He must have been familiar, 
therefore, with the contentions and struggles 
of the infant Christian Church with the Jewish 
rulers of the time. He had probably heard 
the whole story, substantially, of the life and 
death of Jesus ; with incidents in the lives of 
His leading associates. That is manifest from 
what he gives us of such memorials. He 
sketches the career of John the Baptist : says 
that he was a preacher of virtue ; that he bap- 
tized his proselytes ; that he was imprisoned, 
and put to death, by Herod Antipas. He tells 
us, also, of " James, the brother of Him that 

'Mr. Emerson, in Introduction to the "Morals," Ed. 
Little and Brown. 



196 HISTOKIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

was called Jesus,' 1 and of his being put to 
death. But the supremely valuable bit of in- 
formation to Christian believers which Josephus 
affords, is the testimony that he gives us to 
Jesus Himself. And we may now be per- 
mitted to cite the celebrated passage in evi- 
dence, since the latest and greatest of Semitic 
scholars, M. Eenan, concedes, in his Life of 
Jesus, that the testimony is substantially gen- 
uine. 1 "At that time," says Josephus, "lived 
Jesus, a wise man, if Pie may be called a man ; 
for He performed many wonderful works. 
He was the teacher of such men as received 
the truth with pleasure. He drew over to 
Him many Jews and Gentiles. This was the 
Christ. 2 And when Pilate, at the instigation 
of the chief men among us, had condemned 
Him to the cross, they who before had con- 
ceived an affection for Him did not cease to 
adhere to Him ; for on the third day He ap- 
peared to them alive again. And the sect 
of the Christians, so called, subsists to this 
time." 3 

lii La Vie de Jesus," Introduction, pp. 40, 41,— a book 
which fired the public mind with an enthusiasm for ques- 
tions which some years before were deemed superannuated. 
But, upon the whole, the book is a Romance, rather than a 
Biography. 

2 M. Renan suspects that the passage ought to read — was 
called, eAeyero, Christ. 

3 Jos. "Antiq.," xviii. 3. 



HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 197 

Such is the testimony of the great Jewish 
historian, to facts which lie at the foundation 
of Christian Faith. Not the testimony of a 
friend, but of an enemy, of the Gospel ; who 
must have inwardly detested what must have 
appeared to him as a pestilent heresy, no doubt. 
He could have told us very much more to the 
same effect, we may safely infer, I think ; for 
these are merely side-glances, so to speak, from 
the prosecution of his chief purpose; which 
was to write the history of his own people and 
nation, from an orthodox standpoint of the 
then prevalent Israelitish belief. Yet how 
significant are the statements and the allusions 
in the passages I have just cited ! 

Names and events familiar to Christian ears 
are found in these Hebrew Memorabilia also ; 
in their proper places, and in their proper or- 
der: names which link themselves to other 
names which Josephus does not give us ; events 
which require other events to explain them ; — 
for which explanation we must go to the New 
Testament, however. John the Baptist had 
survived, in his reputation, at least ; his work, 
and the death he died are on record elsewhere 
than in the Gospel histories. There is a 
"James" also commemorated, who was a 
" pillar " in the infant Christian Church, as we 
learn later from St. Paul. But the testimony 



198 HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 

of Josephus is fullest and most explicit to the 
" Head " of the Church : — to the miracles He 
wrought, to the style or the spirit of His 
teaching, and to the cardinal fact of His resur- 
rection. While he tells us, too, of the per- 
sistent devotion of His disciples, and of the 
perpetuation of the " sect " of those who were 
called Christians. Why, we have here, the 
reader will note, nearly all the ground facts of 
the Gospel ; and the witness to the whole was 
a contemporary of the first Christian apostles, 
whom it is impossible to suspect of partiality 
for Jesus, or for His doctrine ; all which testi- 
mony we may now receive as reliable, or with 
only slight qualification. 1 

I have got from the Jew all that I intended 
to elicit. He has many more items which I 
might turn to purpose ; but enough. Let a 
man of yet greater eminence in the world of 
letters now take the witness stand. Let a Pa- 
gan take the place of the Jew. 

Tacitus, the Pagan I proceed to call, was 
born about the year 60 of our era. He must 
have known, of course, of the new religious 

lU To demand, before admitting the authenticity of a 
writing, not only direct quotations in a contemporary hook, 
but also multiplied attestations that these quotations are 
neither invented nor mutilated, is to accept as history noth- 
ing but legal documents and official patents." E. De Pres- 
sense: "Jesus Christ: Sis Times, Life, and Work," p. Ill, 
Amer. Translation. 



HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 190 

movement in the East, which by his time had 
spread itself widely over considerable parts of 
the Roman Empire ; for frequent rumors and 
reports of its doings and progress in those 
parts, would reach Rome by way of Brun- 
dusium, or Ostia. Nay : but he knew of it, as 
we shall soon see, through its increasing prev- 
alence in the metropolis itself. Yet he makes 
no formal allusion to this Christian movement. 
It was merely as incidental to the order of his 
narrative of other affairs, that Tacitus conde- 
scends to notice at all what he probably es- 
teemed another outburst of Hebrew fanati- 
cism. His testimony, like that of Josephus, is 
the more valuable, therefore ; from its having 
been given incidentally, simply. And this is 
how he came to give it. 

Twenty-seven years after the crucifixion of 
Christ, Nero burned Rome — in reckless sport, 
it is said by some. But certainly not person- 
ally, or directly, for the Emperor was elsewhere 
when the ruin was wrought. Bat the odium of 
the deed somehow attached itself to Nero. To 
divert, therefore, an inflamed public attention 
from himself, he provided a crowd of " fictitious 
criminals," to use Gibbon's phrase. He caused 
to be seized and to be put to torture " an im- 
mense multitude of men," sa}^s Tacitus. Who 
were these men ? The author of the " Annals " 



200 HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 

will tell us. They were men, says he, " whom the 
common people called Christians." The reader 
will mark, en passant, the amazing fact that 
comes out here ; that within some thirty years 
after the death of Christ His followers were 
multitudinous in Rome ! But who or what 
were these Christians, to the apprehension of 
the historian ? He will tell us. " The author 
of the name" says he " was Christ ; who in the 
reign of Tiberius Cmsar suffered death by the 
sentence of the Procurator, Pontius Pilate" 
Why ! we are here reciting the very words of 
the Apostles' Creed ; though written by the pen 
of a heathen historian, who was thus uncon- 
sciously vindicating a cause which he despised. 
Despised, I say : for note, my reader, how he 
proceeds. "This pernicious superstition, (ex- 
itiabilis superstitio) thus checked for the time," 
— checked by the crucifixion of Jesus, as was 
hoped — " broke out again, and spread, not only 
over Judaea, where the evil originated, but 
through the city also," — Eome. . . . "Ac- 
cordingly, the first who were apprehended con- 
fessed ; and then, on their information, a vast 
multitude were convicted. And when they 
were put to death, mockery was added to their 
sufferings ; for they were either disguised in 
the skins of wild beasts, and worried to death 
by dogs, or they were crucified, or they were 



HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 201 

clothed in some inflammable covering, and 
when the day closed, they were burned as 
lights to illumine the night." * 

A fearfully tragic story, but confirmed by 
very pathetic testimonies which the Roman 
Catacombs have preserved from ancient days 
down to our own. As we tread the gloomy 
labyrinths which stretch for miles beneath the 
city on the Tiber, to which Christians betook 
themselves in times of persecution in the 
earlier Christian centuries, and where they 
buried their dead, — there we may read to-day 
by the light of the torch in the hand of our 
attendant, the confessions of faithful souls in 
multitudes to the truth and the preciousness 
of Christ's religion ; which rendered victims 
of Nero's, or of Diocletian's wrath, or of the, 
wrath of some other imperial tyrant, trium- 
phant over death in its crudest forms : cre- 
dentials, these, beyond all possibility of sus- 
picion. Much of the testimony of antiquity 
to primitive Christianity has been devoured by 
the hungry teeth of Time, as I have said ; but 
in the catacombs, death and the grave are elo- 
quent in attestation of its presence and power 
in the then metropolis of the world ! And 

'Tacitus: Annals xv. 44. "The most sceptical criticism 
is obliged to respect the truth of this extraordinary fact, 
and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus." — 
Gibbon. 



202 HISTOKIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 

men who thus suffered and died for their faith, 
had not been followers of " cunningly devised 
fables." 

Another Roman historian, of unquestionable 
credit, gives us two or three items of evidence 
of an affinity with that of Tacitus, touching 
the credibility of early Christian records. 

Suetonius lived and wrote in the latter part 
of the first century of our era, and the first 
third of the second century. His work on the 
" Lives of the First Twelve Ocesars " survives, 
with a fragment on Grammarians and Rheto- 
ricians. In his life of Claudius, who reigned 
from the year 41 to the year 54, he tells us 
that he, the Emperor, banished all Jews from 
Rome ; which statement precisely corresponds 
with one which we find in our book of the 
" Acts of the Apostles." * This measure was 
meant, as we learn from our author, to relieve 
the city of the disturbances that were contin- 
ually arising among the Israelites within its 
bounds ; the instigator of these tumults, or 
the chief occasion of them, being one Chres- 
tus, as Suetonius relates. 2 He penned this 
brief incidental remark in a light, passing way, 
we must assume ; having had little intimate 

1 Chap, xviii. 2. " Claudius had commanded all Jews to 
depart from Rome." 
sjudseos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes, Romd 

expulit. 



HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 203 

acquaintance, of course, with the people he 
was writing about, or with their interior af- 
fairs. For to him the Jews resident in Rome 
at the period would be about what the Jews 
of the Ghetto were to the better classes of 
the great city down to a comparatively recent 
time ; or still more obscure and despised. Xot 
unnaturally, therefore, Suetonius betrays some 
confusion, or lack of discrimination here, spring- 
ing from his necessary ignorance. For among 
these Jews he is telling of, would be many 
Christianized Jews in the later years of Clau- 
dius. But these the author of the " Lives of 
the Caesars " would not be able to distinguish 
from the majority of their countrymen, in 
dealing with the records or traditions that had 
come down to him. All would be numbered 
and spoken of as Jews. ISTow, between these 
two classes, the orthodox descendants of Abra- 
ham, and the followers of the Galilean, fre- 
quent debates and strifes would ensue, such as 
that we read of as having taken place at Cor- 
inth some years before; 1 the orthodox He- 
brews defaming and persecuting the renegades 
from the customs of Moses ; sometimes putting 
here one and there one to death, we may 
safely assume. It was these contentions and 
emeutes, no doubt, with more serious disorders 
1 Acts of the Apostles, Chap, xviii. 12-16. 



204: HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

springing out of them, at times, which moved 
the Emperor to drive out of the city all these 
troublers of its peace. 

ISTow, during these contentions the name of 
Christ would often be heard, of course. That 
name was really the occasion of all the strife ; 
the Christianized Jews maintaining that Jesus 
was the Christ, the orthodox Jews vehemently 
denying it. Thus it came to pass, that, by 
outsiders, who knew no more as to what these 
foreigners were wrangling about than Gallio 
did on the occasion of the tumult at Corinth, 
and cared as little, this Christ, Christus, Chres- 
tus, came to be thought of and spoken of as 
the impulsor, the chief instigator, the ring- 
leader, of all the disorder. For I identify, 
and that on good authority, Suetonius' Chres- 
tus with our Christ ; the two names differing 
very slightly; they having frequently been 
confounded, or the one having been used for 
the other, by ancient heathen writers. 1 

We thus get from Suetonius an express tes- 
timony to important facts and incidents in 
early Christian history. While he gives us 
more in his Life of Nero, (cap. 16) where we 
read — " The Christians were punished " by 

1 Tertullian takes the heathen writers and speakers of his 
time to task, in his Apology, C. 3, for their so carelessly 
writing or pronouncing Christus Chrestus. 



HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 205 

that cruel prince. Aye ; punished, indeed, as 
Tacitus has just told us in lurid lines. But 
our present author seems to hold that they, these 
Christians, were punished because they were 
" men of a new and magical superstition," as 
he designates them. Yes ; new, certainly, is 
this so-called superstition. Only two very 
short reigns, of some seventeen years taken to- 
gether, since that of the man under whom the 
Founder of the superstition was put to death ; 
but thus early the capital of the world is agi- 
tated by the presence of His disciples. 

But why magical superstition? A word 
flung out at something but dimly or confusedly 
discerned, probably; vaguely hinting, it may 
have been, at the religious rites of the Chris- 
tians, so strange and offensive to Pagan peoples 
hearing of them ; their meetings for worship be- 
ing held in the night, or very early in the morn- 
ing, and in secret places ; when unnatural and 
abhorrent things were done, rumor said. Or 
traditions may have survived, and got abroad, 
of marvels, miracles, having been wrought by 
the Founder of the new sect : — the sick healed 
by a touch, demons cast out, the dead re- 
stored to life: and how could these things 
have been but by the arts of the magician, to 
the apprehension of a Pagan ? Or the word 
maleficce used by Suetonius here, may have had 



206 HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

for him in his using it, its general etymological 
signification of evil-doing, simply. For had 
not this reputation fastened itself upon Chris- 
tians almost everywhere at that time ? Hating 
the world, they were hated by it : — " odium 
generis humani" as Tacitus pronounces; all 
sorts of misdemeanors and crimes being at- 
tributed to them, when scapegoats were 
wanted for imperial or popular passions to 
wreak themselves on. The Founder of the su- 
jperstitio was a malefactor, or was so reported 
of. How easy to conclude, therefore, that the 
superstiHo itself was malefica! In one or 
other of these ways, we may construe Sueto- 
nius' denunciation of the sect of the JSazarenes. 
But for the loss of historic documents, we 
might have had to-day in our hands testimony 
still more explicit than that of Tacitus to the 
truth of New Testament statements. For we 
read in one of the early Christian Apologists, 
of a State Paper, then preserved in the ar- 
chives of Rome, it would appear, entitled the 
" Acts of Pilate " ; such Paper purporting to 
be a report made by the celebrated Procurator 
to his Imperial master of his administration 
of affairs in Judasa ; in which the miracles 
and the crucifixion of Jesus were spoken of. 
To such a document Justin Martyr appeals, at 
least, in his Apology presented to the Em- 



HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 207 

peror, Antoninus Pius, and the Eoman Sen- 
ate, about the year 140 ; where he says, — 
" And that he did those things, you can learn 
from the Acts of Pontius Pilate." 1 

This document — the " Acts of Pilate " — has 
perished, however, assuming that it once ex- 
isted ; but we have a Paper of like import in 
the letter which the Younger Pliny addressed, 
while governor of Pontus and Bythinia, to 
the Emperor Trajan ; in which letter he asks 
counsel as to how he should deal with those 
men of his province who were charged with 
neglecting the Pagan temples. " I have never 
had to deal with this kind before," says the 
imperial Deputy, " and I know not what is the 
custom to pursue : whether any distinction is 
to be made in respect of age, or whether those 
of tender years are to be treated the same as 
adults: whether pardon is to be granted on 
repentance, or whether it is useless to cease to 
be a Christian : whether it is the name that is 
to be pursued, even when exempt from crime, 
or that the crime is to be attached to the 
name." What a singular question ! Crime 



'The writings of Justin Martyr: — "Ante Nicene Chris- 
tian Library," Clark's Ed., p. 47. 

Tertullian, in his Apology, about the year 200, confirms 
the reference of Justin, saying — "Of all these things, re- 
lating to Christ, Pilate, in his conscience a Christian, sent 
an account to Tiberius, then Emperor." 



208 HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

attached to a name otherwise wholly free of 
reproach ! How vividly one is reminded of 
words spoken some years before Pliny's time : 
— "Ye shall be hated of all men for my 
name's sake ! " 

The guilt of these Christians, Pliny goes on 
to say, " they confessed to be this : that they 
were accustomed to meet on a stated day be- 
fore light, and to sing a hymn alternately to 
Christ, as a god ; and to bind themselves by 
an oath, not to the commission of any wicked- 
ness, but not to be guilty of theft, or robbery, 
or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor 
to deny a pledge committed to them, when 
called upon to return it." "When these things 
were performed," said these Christians under 
examination, " it was their custom to separate, 
and to come together again to a meal, which 
they ate in common, without any disorder." 
Indeed ! Well might Pliny be puzzled in hav- 
ing to do with offenders of such sort. He 
knew of men taking oaths : oaths of conspir- 
acy against the government he represented, and 
in other desperate plottings ; but here were 
men taking oath not to commit any wickedness ! 

Yet had the governor of Bythinia only a 
confused notion, probably, of what he was 
just here writing about. From more intimate 
knowledge of Christian usages than he could t 



HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 209 

then have had, however, we can shed light on 
some of his vague allusions. The " meal " to 
which he refers was the " Lord's Supper " (or 
the AgapaB, possibly) ; the observance of 
which Jesus had enjoined, as we know, upon 
His followers for all time. While we know 
well, also, what was meant by the " oath " he 
mentions, or how the report of oath-taking 
had come to his ears. Among Latin-speak- 
ing peoples, the word by which the Holy Sup- 
per was early designated was sacramentum ; 
which also meant, which commonly meant, in- 
deed, in those times, an oath. What Pliny refers 
to, therefore, we may safely decide, was what 
we still call the sacrament ; in the receiving 
of which those primitive Christians vowed al- 
legiance to Christ, as Christians do to-day the 
world round. And so great was the number 
of those who did this, that Pliny complains 
that the heathenish temples were all but 
empty ! What a marvellous revolution in 
such a brief space of time ! Who was its 
author ? By what power had it been accom- 
plished ? These early disciples of Jesus have 
told us through the pen of a Pagan philoso- 
pher. " They were accustomed to sing a 
hymn to Christ, as God" 

Support is lent to Pliny's representation of 
the condition of things in his province during 



210 HISTOKIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

his administration, by a writer who flourished 
a little later ; who states, in a book bearing 
the title of " Alexandrus" that in his time 
Pontus was " full of Christians." This author, 
Lucian, was born about the year 125, at Samo- 
sata on the upper Euphrates. A scoffing phi- 
losopher, a severe satirist, but an acutely clever 
man, he traveled far and wide in quest of 
knowledge touching everything then know- 
able ; becoming a bright, witty, fertile scholar. 
In his wanderings and sojournings in various 
cities he came upon Christians, of course ; 
otherwise learning much about them. Yet 
has he nothing but scorn for them ; using the 
knowledge he gathered about them as material 
for insulting caricature. Some of his state- 
ments or allusions are very notable, however, 
in their bearing upon the subject I am treat- 
ing in this Essay. In his work " De Morte 
Peregrini" a satire upon voluntary martyr- 
doms, then so common, he makes fuller and 
more explicit reference to the disciples of 
Jesus than elsewhere. His hero, Peregrinus, 
Lucian represents as playing the part of a 
hypocrite at Antioch; joining the Christian 
society there, rising to the dignity of a bishop 
through the skilful, agile way in which he 
demeaned himself, but holding his religious as- 
sociates in contempt the while ; speaking of 



HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 211 

them — in Lucian's fiction, the reader will bear 
in mind — as " miserable men ; who, hoping for 
immortality in soul and body, had a foolish 
contempt of death, and suffered themselves to 
be persuaded that they were brethren ; be- 
cause, having abandoned the worship of the 
Greek gods, they worshipped the crucified 
Sophist, living according to his laws." Pope 
Alexander VII., in 1664, placed Lucian's " Pere- 
grinus " in the index of prohibited books ; 
" yet even beneath the satire," as the Kev. A. 
S. Farrar remarks, " we rather hail Lucian as 
an unconscious witness to several beautiful 
features in the character of the Christians of 
his time : viz, their worship of ' the crucified 
Sophist,' their guilelessness, their brotherly 
love, their strict discipline, their common 
meals, their union, their benevolence, their joy 
in death. His satire is contempt, not anger, 
nor dread. It is the humor of a thorough 
sceptic ; which discharged itself on all religions 
alike, indicating one type of opposition to 
Christianity : viz, the contempt of those who 
thought it folly." x 

Much more might be gathered from non- 
Christian sources in support of the position I 
am trying to make good, as the basis for a 

1 " Critical History of Free Thought, " being the " Bamp- 
ton Lecture " for the year 1862. Lect. II. 






212 HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

conclusion of some consequence, as I hold, to 
Christian Faith. What I have already done, 
however, may suffice to that end. The cita- 
tions are trite to scholars : I simply aim to 
bring them into more general recognition ; 
chiefly in correction of a type of infidelity 
which continues to assert, or to insinuate, that 
Jesus is a Myth, that Christianity was palmed 
upon the credulity of ignorant ages by priests, 
or that the Christian Christ is only the 
Krishna of Hindoo mythology, transferred to 
another age and another clime ! With such 
notions there is not much likelihood of Schol- 
ars being seriously infected to-day ; but in in- 
fidel circles not scholarly, such notions are still 
current. Historical Science has done some- 
thing for us, how much soever it may have 
unsettled. 

Yet could the men whose testimonies I have 
been reviewing have known little more of 
Christ than His bare existence ; with certain 
facts and incidents, rumors or reports of which 
would naturally get abroad. For very much 
more we cannot reasonably look to Eoman 
historians, or to Greek satirists, or to men 
whose minds were charged with aversion 
toward, and with hatred of, the new Sect. 
These men, at best, saw Christ only at a dis- 
tance, so to speak; or heard of Him only 



HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 213 

through uncertain or perverting media. For 
a fuller and more faithful portraiture of Jesus 
we shall have to go elsewhere : to men who 
associated with Him closely, and saw Him 
familiarly, and heard Him through sympa- 
thetic ears : — "men who received the truth with 
pleasure" to recur to Josephus' characteriza- 
tion. "We shall have, in brief, to bring the 
Christian Scriptures in evidence. 

And why not ? It may be to refute them, 
or to find them put to confusion in the hear- 
ing ; but we cannot consistently wholly ignore 
them. Of course not. In historical investiga- 
tions, since Niebuhr wrote, we miss no item of 
significance seemingly the smallest; we lose 
the track of no hint, though leading into mist 
and quagmire ; while we listen with acute ear 
to testimony the most remotely bearing upon 
the end we are trying to reach ; never will- 
ingly or knowingly suffering the slightest de- 
posit of prejudice to abide in the mind, while 
prosecuting any line of inquiry we have in 
hand. Simple fairness would therefore re- 
quire that we hear the Evangelists and Apos- 
tles of Jesus in this debate. But this I waive, 
if only as being beyond the scope of my origi- 
nal intention ; merely glancing at some of the 
more strikingly identifying features of the 
delineation which we have in the Gospels. 



214 HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

This I may do without protest being heard, 
since even our " destructive " critics treat the 
character of Jesus as historical ; but taking of 
it only what pleases them, or serves their pur- 
pose, and rejecting the rest. The day of Vol- 
taire as a critic, with that of Thomas Paine, is 
gone. Even to Strauss, Jesus is the wise Gal- 
ileean Kabbi : the being without whose pres- 
ence in the mind perfect piety is impossible. 
To M. Renan he is " the loveliest incarnation 
of God, whose beauty is eternal, and whose 
reign shall have no end." While Goethe 
speaks of Him as " the divine man, the holy 
one ; the pattern, example, and model of hu- 
manity " : the life of the Saviour appearing to 
Mr. Carlyle as "a perfect ideal poem " : the 
greatest of all heroes to him being " One 
whom he will not name, leaving sacred silence 
to meditate that sacred matter " ; Jean Jaques 
Rousseau, as representing a somewhat earlier 
period of Free-thinking, having left the judg- 
ment on record, in his Pensees et Maximes, (p. 
39,) that " the Gospel has marks of truth in it 
so striking and so perfectly inimitable, that 
the inventor of it would have been more won- 
derful than the hero." 

We may look back on Jesus then as upon a 
real, intellectually tangible personage ; and 
may study His character, as we study the char- 



HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 215 

acters of other men whom history commemo- 
rates ; carefully eschewing everything in our 
estimate, of course, which Criticism would for- 
bid our availing ourselves of. 

Qualities were prominent in that character 
upon which the world has cast disdain : con- 
descension, tenderness, pity ; but to these Jesus 
gave conspicuous place in His teachings and 
life. Taking hold of lowly and despised 
things, He showed how much of an overlooked 
heavenliness there was in them. His doctrine 
came forth in speech simple almost as that of 
childhood. Passing by the sages of history, 
He took a little child, and set him in the midst 
of His disciples and on-lookers, telling the 
great and the wise to be imitators of him. 
" Learn of Me," said He, "for I am meek and 
lowly in heart." "Blessed are the poor in 
spirit," the "peacemakers," the "merciful," 
and even "they that mourn." How novel 
such doctrines must have seemed, the reader 
may be ready to exclaim, to an age hard, and 
selfish, and sensuous as that of Herod, or 
Tiberius ! From the first, Jesus allied His 
cause with weakness, and with despised classes 
of people ; a fact very strange in the founder 
of a new Kingdom. Going down to the level 
where the lowliest stood He made the igno- 
rant and the outcast His brethren ; entering 



216 HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOE FAITH. 

into their modes of thought, making their joys 
and their sorrows His own, defending them 
against the tyranny of priests, and rabbis, and 
civil rulers. 

There was another side to Christ's character, 
however, as portrayed in the Gospel histories, 
than that of a gentle, patient passivity. There 
was a vehemence and a severity in His temper, 
at times, seemingly incompatible with the 
milder attributes so prominent in Him ; as 
when He denounced the hollo wness of those 
who could " tithe mint and anise and cummin," 
while forgetting " the weightier matters of the 
law, — judgment, mercy, faith " : or as when 
He pronounced repeated woes upon " Pharisees 
and Scribes, hypocrites " ; who " devoured 
widows' houses, and for a pretense made long 
prayers " ; using the language of a startling 
fidelity when He rebuked the appointed teach- 
ers of the nation as " blind guides," " whited 
sepulchres," a " brood of vipers," fit only for 
" the damnation of hell ! " 

Side by side with His humility, too, there is 
what we might almost call a very pronounced 
egotism in Jesus ; speaking " as one having au- 
thority " ; telling men to hear Him, to obey and 
follow Him ; setting aside divine institutions 
as having done their work since He had come ; 
overruling and contradicting the teachings of 



HISTORIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 217 

lawgivers and prophets; assigning no higher 
authority for all He did than a " verily, verily, 
I say nnto you " ; and all without a trace of 
fanaticism in the saying and doing of these 
things. He dared, also, did this Christ of the 
Gospels, to institute a Society with universal 
aims ; sending out ambassadors to make known 
His will to the world, even when unable, to all 
outward seeming, to defend Himself against 
the malice that was seeking His life. 

How free He was, again, of all traditional 
bias, of all sectarian partiality, of all national 
prejudice ; calling Himself, therefore, not the 
son of Abraham, nor the son of David, but the 
Son of Man. Eising out of all moral limita- 
tions of time and place, of race and of religion, 
He embraced the world in the scope of His de-, 
sire and aims. Even so. Of all prophets or 
teachers, of any age or country, Jesus of Naza- 
reth was the first to break through all narrow- 
ing inherited restraints, to ignore all hampering 
ethnic affinities, and to teach, even in the face 
of an envenomed bigotry, the universal Father- 
hood of God and the brotherhood of men ! 1 

A veritably unique sort of personage must 

1 The inspiration of these brief notices of Christ's char- 
acter is from the Rev. Dr. Bnshnell. See his "Nature and 
the Supernatural," (Chap. x.). From a comparison of Dr. 
B.'s treatment of the subject and my hasty sketch, some 
verbal identities may possibly be detected. 



218 HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

we hold this Son of Man to be, then, saying 
nothing of claims more transcendent, of which 
we may not take account here. Yet how un- 
worthily has the image which the fourfold 
Biography gives us been treated ; with what 
blind rage has it been insulted, at times ! At 
one period, and for awhile, Jesus was an " im- 
postor " ! but this chiefly among men embit- 
tered by the wickednesses of Ecclesiasticism. 
The men who started, or who circulated the 
foul allegation soon grew ashamed of it, how- 
ever. It is therefore discarded now, except by 
a vulgar unbelief. It does not answer the pur- 
pose of its inventors ; it will not fit into all the 
wards of Christ's character ; it originates for 
the unbeliever more difficulties than it solves 
for Him. Here was an impostor with no dis- 
coverable motive for His imposture: an im- 
postor who despised worldly gain and glory, 
who preached the blessedness of self-denial, 
who said that purity and love and righteous- 
ness are the most precious things in life, who 
bribed His followers by promises of poverty 
and persecution, and who laid down His own 
life in attestation of these precepts. Impostors 
being rarely found of this order, we hear no 
more to-day of the old vile imputation. 

But He is next, or with others, a demented 
enthusiast. Not a deceiver, but Himself de- 



HISTOKIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 219 

ceived : — carried away by a frenzy born of re- 
ligious broodings. Strange 5 this : very strange. 
As if the Lord's Prayer, or the Sermon on the 
Mount, could have come from the lips of a dis- 
tempered fanatic ! No : enthusiasm there 
doubtless was in Jesus, but with no trace of an 
insane extravagance about it. It was quiet, 
reverent, humane, discriminating ; free of all 
those melancholy eccentricities by which we 
know the religious zealot in history or in life. 
Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, with 
later adverse reporters or maligners of Jesus, 
or of His followers, did not know of these 
things, or they might have reported other- 
wise of Him, and of them. But nay : the 
doctrine of Jesus was too high, too heavenly, 
for men living in their times, with their moral 
vision confused and blurred by prejudice and 
passion, to take it in. After more than eight- 
een centuries of increasing fitness for the do- 
ing of that, as we complacently count, even the 
Christian world still fails to take it in. 

All direct, positive testimony to the truth of 
the Gospel's advent into the world, and its 
work in it, I have left beyond regard, the 
reader will note, in this discussion : — the litera- 
ture which the new religious life created, the 
institutions it built up, the victories it won 
over hoary superstitions, and false philosophies. 



220 HISTOEIC FOOTHOLD FOR FAITH. 

and political tyrannies. Of these, with multi- 
tudes of other facts, and "conspiring prob- 
abilities," of like import, I have said nothing. 
I have not suffered Christianity to say a word 
through its mouthpiece, the Church. I have 
tried to be true to the aim which I expressed 
in almost the opening sentences of this writing : 
— to ascertain if the outlying, non-Christian 
world knew anything of the wondrous things 
that the Evangelists and Apostles of Jesus tell 
us of, at or about the time the things were said 
and done. That it did know something of 
them has been made tolerably plain, I may now 
presume to say. It did not know much, — how 
could it ? — But it knew sufficient to lend credi- 
bility to the Gospel story. Enough. We have 
found a Christ — the Christ, in history, aliens 
and enemies being witness. And with that 
fact Unbelief will have to reckon* 




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